A U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter belonging to a US-led international peacekeeping force crashed in Egypt’s Sinai region on Thursday, killing seven people, including five Americans, officials said.
The statement noted that five Americans died in the crash. The other victims were a French national and a Czech national and all were members of the military.
“During a routine mission in the vicinity of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, nine members of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) were involved in a helicopter crash,” it said in a statement.
“An IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) helicopter carrying elite search and rescue soldiers… evacuated an injured American MFO peacekeeper to an Israeli hospital for medical treatment,” the Israeli army said.
The aircraft, a UH-60 Black Hawk, was on a reconnaissance mission and crashed near the island of Tiran, in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, apparently because of a technical failure, the Egyptian official said.
Both Israeli and Egyptian officials said it appeared to have been an accident and there were no signs of the aircraft being attacked.
