Helicopter Crash at Kabul base Kills 5 Coalition personnel

A military helicopter crashed Sunday at the NATO base in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing five coalition members and injuring five others, authorities said.

A statement from the Resolute Support Mission did not give the nationalities of those killed and injured, all of them NATO personnel. But the British Ministry of Defense said two Royal Air Force members were among those killed when the Puma Mk 2 helicopter crashed while landing at the headquarters of the NATO Resolute Support Mission, which is training Afghan security forces.

The mission statement said the helicopter “crashed due to a non-hostile incident” around 4:15 p.m. Sunday at Camp Resolute Support in Kabul. It is the second crash of a military aircraft in as many weeks. The crash of an Air Force C-130J transport aircraft at Jalalabad Airfield killed 11 people on Oct. 2.

U.S. Army Col. Brian Tribus, the spokesman in Afghanistan for U.S. and NATO forces, would only say that an “incident” involving a NATO aircraft and an observational balloon had taken place “in the vicinity of the Resolute Support base” in central Kabul. The monitoring balloon was severed from its mooring in the incident, he said, without providing further details.

Sources: Agencies