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Indonesia military helicopter crashes; 14 killed

A military helicopter crashed in Indonesia’s Central Java province Thursday, killing all 14 air force personnel on board, officials said.
/ Source: Reuters

A military helicopter crashed in Indonesia’s Central Java province on Thursday, killing all 14 air force personnel on board, officials said, citing bad weather as the cause of the incident.

It was the second military helicopter crash in as many days, after a Navy aircraft went down on Wednesday killing four people.

“It is a Super Puma helicopter. The time of the accident was just after midday,” Rasendro, an air force official, told Reuters from Yogyakarta, 270 miles east of Jakarta.

“The weather was very bad with hard rain and thick fog,” he added. The helicopter had been en route to Jakarta from Yogyakarta when it went down in mountainous terrain.

All eight passengers and six crew were killed, Rasendro said, adding that all of them were air force personnel. A search and rescue official in the Central Java capital Semarang said the bodies were in the process of being removed from the wreckage.

On Wednesday, a helicopter belonging to the navy crashed in remote Papua province, killing all of four people on board. Officials have also cited bad weather as the cause of that crash.