TARBELA: An army officer was killed when a military helicopter on a routine night training mission crashed in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Monday, an official statement said.The crash took place as the helicopter was landing in Tarbela, it said.
Lieutenant Colonel Tauqeer embraced martyrdom while four others escaped alive, the statement added, without mentioning whether they sustained injuries.The accident follows a string of crashes in recent months.
In May last year, Ambassador of Philippines Domingo D Lucenario Jr, Ambassador of Norway Leif Larsen and the wives of the Malaysian and Indonesian ambassadors were among seven people killed in a helicopter crash in Naltar valley in the Gilgit Baltistan region. Two pilots and a crewmember were among those killed when the Pakistan Army helicopter crash-landed on a school in Naltar valley.
Another army helicopter was crashed in August of the same year, near Mansehra district and killing all on board.Air accidents involving Mi-17 in Pakistan include a 2004 crash near Karak in which 13 soldiers were killed; a 2007 crash near Muzzafarabad on the occasion of inauguration of development projects there; one in 2009 in Kurram Agency in which 41 people were killed; and another in Skardu in 2012 in which five people died.