A military helicopter with five crew and 14 civilians on board has crashed in a valley near the epicentre of last month's Sichuan earthquake, the first such accident in the massive relief effort. A day after the crash, there was no word of survivors.
The Russian-made helicopter was en route to Chengdu after dropping off epidemic-prevention experts from the army in a nearby county, according to media reports.
News of the crash came on a day emotions were running high. The mainland yesterday marked Children's Day, usually a joyous occasion but this year serving only as a powerful reminder of the huge loss of life that took place in shoddily built schools across the quake zone in Sichuan . In one town, grieving parents held up pictures of their dead children as they marched from the rubble of a collapsed school to the offices of the local government.
It is still not clear what happened before the helicopter crashed, but weather conditions were reported to have been misty, with strong winds. A military expert quoted by mainland media said the helicopter had a relatively small engine, which reduced a pilot's ability to steer around patches of bad weather in the mountainous region.
CCTV reported that the Russian-made Mi-171 helicopter left Fenghuangshan Military Airport at 1pm heading to Li county, about 50km north of Yingxiu, and began the return trip at 2.20pm. A Xinhua report said the helicopter crashed near Yingxiu 36 minutes later.
President Hu Jintao , who is visiting quake-affected areas in Shaanxi and Gansu , ordered the vice-chairman of the central military commission, General Guo Boxiong , to the area to monitor the search effort.
