Srinagar: Six air warriors and a civilian were killed after one Mi-17 V5 helicopter of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed in Jammu and Kashmir’s Budgam district on Wednesday morning.
The officials said that the Russian-made copter crashed in an open field outside Budgam’s Garend Kalan village, seven kilometres from the main town of Budgam, around 10.10 am. It broke into two and caught fire immediately. Later the charred bodies recovered from the wreckage were identified to be those of a local resident Kifayat Hussain Ganai and six officials of the IAF.
The officials said that the helicopter got airborne from the Srinagar airfield at 10 am for a routine mission. “All six air warriors on board helicopter, suffered fatal injuries,” they said adding that a court of inquiry has been ordered to investigate accident.
The locals who rushed to the site of the crash said that the bodies were charred in the incident. They also said that 20-year-old Ganai and several other youths were sitting in the field where the chopper crashed. The crash took place in the backdrop of heavy exchanges of mortar and small arms fire reported from several places along the Line of Control and Pakistan’s claim that it shot down two IAF fighter jets which had violated its air space. It, however, later also said that it did not engage the IAF’s Mi-17 V5 chopper which crashed in Budgam.
Amid heightening tensions and unfolding of these incidents, airports in Srinagar, Jammu, Leh, Amritsar and other parts of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh were shut temporarily. The order on shutting down all airspace close to the border with Pakistan was, however, withdrawn after some time.
