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Wednesday April 24, 2024

Mexico helicopter crash kills 13

By REUTERS
February 18, 2018

SANTIAGO JAMILTEPEC, Mexico: At least 13 people on the ground, including three children, were killed when a Mexican military helicopter carrying top officials surveying damages from an earthquake crashed in a small town in the southern state of Oaxaca, authorities said on Saturday.

The helicopter, which was carrying Mexico´s interior minister and the state governor, crashed on top of two vans in an open field while trying to land in Santiago Jamiltepec after a tour of damage from a powerful earthquake on Friday, officials said.

The senior officials survived but 12 people at the scene were killed and another died later in a hospital, Oaxaca´s attorney general´s office said in a statement. Fifteen more people were injured. The 7.2 magnitude quake left nearly a million homes and businesses without power in Mexico City and the south and damaged at least 50 homes in Oaxaca.