Helicopter crash bodies recovered

All the bodies of 16 people who died in a helicopter crash in central Vietnam have been recovered.

It took recovery teams about half an hour to carry the bodies, of nine Vietnamese and seven Americans, on stretchers down the hill from where the crash happened.

The accident happened as they group searched for the remains of Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War.

Villagers reported seeing the Russian-made MI-17 helicopter making unusual swinging movements before crashing. Officials are investigating the cause of the accident.

Those killed were the advance team for a 95-member American group that is scheduled to begin work at six MIA recovery sites in early May.

Their identities will not be released until their families have been notified. Their bodies were taken in vehicles to Hanoi for later repatriation to Hawaii.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the overall program of searching for MIAs and recovering their remains will continue. The helicopter was a Vietnamese military aircraft and its pilot was Vietnamese.

Local authorities found one Vietnamese man still alive when they reached the crash site. The man told them the helicopter was carrying an MIA search team. He later died.

Since 1973, the remains of 591 American service members formerly listed as unaccounted for have been identified and returned to their families. There are 1,992 Americans still unaccounted for from the war in Southeast Asia, including 1,498 in Vietnam.