Turkish military helicopter crashes in Kurdish province

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – A military helicopter belonging to the Turkish army on Wednesday night crashed in the Kurdish province of Sirnak, killing all 13 soldiers onboard.

A press release by the army said the French-made AS 532 COUGAR helicopter with 13 military personnel onboard jammed into a high-voltage overhead power line at 8:55 p.m. local time in Sirnak’s Senoba village.

About 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of the border with the Kurdistan Region, Senoba serves as a main military base for the Turkish army where it has been staging large-scale operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

A Major General named Aydogan Aydin was among the killed.

There was an investigation launched into the incident, added the General Staff release.

In a short statement, the Governorate of Sirnak said all communications with the helicopter were cut off only three minutes after it took off, without stating when.

The privately-owned Dogan news agency reported that communications were off at 7:40 p.m. local time.

On Friday, a funeral ceremony with the attendance of three ministers and the Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akara was held at the 23rd Division of the Army near the border.

There have been two previous cases in which Turkey’s Cougar helicopters have crashed.

In June 1997, during a cross-border incursion into the Kurdistan Region, a missile fired by PKK fighters downed a Cougar, killing 11 soldiers.

Another Cougar crashed in April 2001 in the Isparta Province during a training drill, killing four troops and wounding another.

As Turkey adopted a more aggressive policy against the PKK which is fighting for Kurdish self-rule, casualties have risen in both sides since the collapse of a two-year-held ceasefire in 2015.

In May 2016, PKK fighters downed a Cobra attack helicopter with a ground-to-air missile that resulted in the killing of two pilots aboard in Hakkari Province.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany