Probe into crash which killed seven peacekeepers

GERMAN military aviation experts arrived in the Afghan capital Kabul yesterday to investigate the cause of a helicopter crash which killed all seven German peacekeepers on board.

A spokesman for the 4,800-strong multi-national peacekeeping force said two Afghan children earlier reported killed in Saturday’s crash in eastern Kabul were confirmed alive.

The crash came the same day as unidentified attackers killed a United States soldier in a firefight on the eastern border with Pakistan, the first US combat death in Afghanistan since August.

Brigadier General Werner Freers, commander of the 1,280 German peacekeeping contingent, said the team of military experts from the Bundeswehr Flight Safety Agency would examine the wreckage.

He said a separate team of peacekeepers would analyse flight recordings made at Kabul airport’s control tower which might contain final emergency calls from the crew.

The seven bodies were still in the crashed helicopter yesterday to preserve evidence.

Two Afghan children, who police said on Saturday died in the crash, had run away in shock and were now back with their families.

British peacekeeping spokesman Major Gordon Mackenzie, who was on a nearby rooftop, said he saw orange flames as the helicopter struggled to maintain altitude.

“It went up, nose up ... and then I realised there were flames coming out of the engine compartment just below the rotor, a lot of flames. Then it went straight down.”

The helicopter was destroyed except for its tail section. All that was left was “a low pile of rubble,” said Mackenzie. The area was still cordoned off yesterday.

Mackenzie said the peacekeeping force had suffered 14 deaths since the end of 2001 when it began patrolling Kabul to bolster stability in the war-battered capital.

These included two British soldiers who died in a shooting in August that did not involve enemy attackers.

Also on Saturday, a United States 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper, Sgt. Steven Checo, 22, died in a gun battle in the eastern town of Shkhin.

A US Special Forces soldier was wounded in a rocket attack on a US base in the city of Asadabad.

Checo’s death was the first U.S. combat death in Afghanistan since August, and brings to 17 the number of Americans killed in hostilities since the war on terror began late last year.