Helicopter airlifting refugees crashes in Iraq
An Mi-17 helicopter taking part in an aid mission in the Sinjar Mountains, Iraq, crashed on 12 August. The pilot was killed and a number of passengers were injured.
An Mi-17 helicopter taking part in an aid mission in the Sinjar Mountains, Iraq, crashed on 12 August. The pilot was killed and a number of passengers were injured, including Iraqi Member of Parliament Vian Dakheel, New York Times correspondent Alissa Rubin and Adam Ferguson, a freelance photographer also working for the newspaper. The aircraft had delivered relief supplies to members of the minority Yazidi community who had fled to the mountains to escape from Islamic State militants.
The town of Sinjar fell to Islamic State fighters on August 4, who told Yazidi residents they would be forced to convert to Islam or face execution. Dahkeel is the sole Yazidi member of the parliament of Iraq.
Ferguson reported that the helicopter was being operated by the Peshmerga forces of the government of the autonomous Kurdistan Region and was carrying a four-strong crew along with around 20 to 25 Yazidi evacuees. It crashed shortly after take-off, landing upside-down. Two rescue helicopters later transferred the survivors to a Peshmerga base, said Fuad Hessein, chief of staff to the president of the Kurdistan Region.
According to Hussein, the crash occurred after the helicopter contacted a boulder as it was taking off, causing the pilot to lose control. However, Ferguson suggested that the aircraft may have been carrying too many passengers. This view was corroborated by Jonathan Rugman, a correspondent for UK-based Channel Four News. Speaking from Dohuk in Iraq, he told the US broadcaster NPR that he had spoken to the pilot minutes before the final flight began, who had expressed concerns that the helicopter was overloaded.
Rugman said: “[The pilot] was worried that the helicopter was too heavy. And indeed, it did seem to struggle to take off.” He added that the governor of Dohuk has stated that in their desperation, a number of refugees had clung to the outside of the helicopter as it lifted off, further contributing to the weight of the passengers onboard.
A later statement from an Iraqi Army spokesman also said that the helicopter had been overloaded: “The helicopter delivered aid to the people stranded in Sinjar and too many people boarded it and it hit the mountain during take-off.”
The day before the crash, Rugman was onboard a helicopter flown by the same pilot who was killed in the incident. He said that there were similar scenes of desperate civilians trying to force their way onto the aircraft in that flight.
Ivan Watson of CNN described a similar mission he witnessed as ‘heroic’, adding: “The crew was just trying to pull up as many people as possible. A little baby … ended up in my hands. It was chaotic. It was crazy, but we were able to then lift off with about 20 civilians.” On that flight, the helicopter came under attack from Islamic State forces and the crew returned fire, said Watson: “They flew in shooting, they flew out shooting.”
Planes drop relief supplies
As well as the helicopters delivering aid and evacuating some of the stranded Yazidis, food and water was dropped by transport planes.
On 9 August, three US Air Force cargo aircraft dropped a total of 72 bundles of supplies including nearly 4,000 gallons of water and over 16,000 meals.
On 10 August, a UK Royal Air Force (RAF) plane was unable to drop supplies as there were so many refugees on the ground that no clear area could be found to safely drop the aid bundles. An RAF representative said: “The safety of the Yazidi community is paramount. With a number of people at the drop sites this morning, the crew made the responsible decision not to carry out the air drop to ensure that the lives of those in the area would not be put at risk.”
By 14 August, however, the news coming from the area was that conditions in the mountains had improved, thanks to the aid drops, US air strikes against the militants and the efforts of the Peshmerga, and plans for further rescue efforts – including the use of RAF transport helicopters – were shelved.