At the Lumut naval facility in Perak, on Tuesday, two Malaysian Navy helicopters crashed in midair, killing as many as ten personnel.
According to Al Jazeera, the incident happened about 9:30 am while navy helicopters were practicing for the Navy Day parade.
The corpses of all ten crew members have been sent to the military hospital at the Lumut naval station for identification, according to the Malaysian Navy, which has verified their deaths.
Numerous helicopters were flying in formation when one of them struck another’s rotor and both plummeted into the ground, according to a video that went viral on local media.
The legitimacy of the video has also been verified by the local police in the interim.
The Navy declared that it will look into what caused the mishap.
The Fennec combat helicopter and the marine operations helicopter, according to Defense Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin, were practicing for Saturday’s Royal Malaysian Navy 90th anniversary parade.
The minister told reporters that attempts were being made to confirm the identity of the crew members who perished—all of them were under 40—while speaking to them.
The other helicopter, carrying three passengers, fell into a swimming pool, while the other, carrying seven people, landed into a jogging track, according to the BBC.
In response to the event, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim expressed sympathy to the relatives of the deceased in a post on X, stating that the nation “mourns the heart-wrenching tragedy”.
This event occurs when a Malaysian Coast Guard helicopter fell into the water near Malaysia’s Angsa Island last month, resulting in the rescue of two crew members.
The nation has a history of helicopter crashes; in 2020, two helicopters collided in a similar occurrence, killing two persons.
Six individuals perished prior to it, one of them being Noriah Kasnon, the Deputy Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities at the time, in a helicopter accident in 2016.
The event happened a year after Jamaluddin Jarjis, the ambassador of Malaysia to the US at the time, and four other people perished in a jungle after their helicopter crashed.
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