A military helicopter with 17 people on board, including 11 foreigners, comes down in Gilgit-Baltistan region.
Islamabad, Pakistan – A Pakistani military helicopter carrying foreign diplomats in the mountainous region of Gilgit-Baltistan has crashed, killing six people including the ambassadors of Philippines, Domingo Lucenario Jr and Norway, Leif Larsen, also the wives of the Malaysian and Indonesian ambassadors to Pakistan and the helicopter’s two Pakistani pilots.
Dutch ambassador Marcel de Vink and Polish ambassador Andrzej Ananicz were injured in the crash. The helicopter that crashed was part of a group of three, all of which were carrying 37 foreign diplomats on their tour of the area.
The MI-17 helicopter was carrying 17 people, including 11 foreigners, the military’s spokesperson Major-General Asim Bajwa said in an earlier statement. The 13 survivors had “varying degrees of injuries”. The injured are being treated at the Combined Military Hospital at Jutial, about 30km away from the area in which the crash occurred.
The aircraft crashed in the Naltar Valley area of Gilgit-Baltistan, about 300km north of the capital Islamabad.
Gilgit-Baltistan is located in Pakistan’s extreme north, and is at the junction of three major mountain ranges: the Himalayas, the Karakorum and the Hindu Kush. It is home to more than 100 peaks higher than 7,000 metres. It is also part of the disputed region of Kashmir.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was due to visit Gilgit-Baltistan on Friday, which the diplomats were visiting as part of a four-day tour.
