5 Dead in Chopper Crash in Caspian Sea

The Governor of Behshahr Khaleq Sajjadi said all five passengers on board were killed and Red Crescent Society rescue teams found their dead bodies.

Hossein Jafarzadeh, Hassan Mohammadi, Ali Mardasi, Reza Sangheri and Gholamreza Mirzaei passed away during the accident.

Technical failure caused the crash after the helicopter with five on board took off on a mission to carry an injured person from an oil platform, Khaleqi noted, as reported by Mehr.

Meanwhile, the IRGC spokesman announced that the helicopter that crashed in the Caspian Sea early Sunday was a Mil Mi-17 chopper in possession of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force.

According to Head of the IRGC Public Relations Department General Ramezan Sharif, the IRGC helicopter was at disposal of Khazar Exploration and Production Company (KEPCO), a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).

The aircraft was dispatched to Amir-Kabir semi-submersible drilling rig in the Caspian Sea, 20 kilometres off the port of Amirabad, at around 4:30 a.m. local time, to rescue an employee suffering a heart attack, Sharif explained.

After picking up the individual, the helicopter began to fly back to shore, but crashed shortly after take-off and descended into the sea, killing all five people on board, he said.

The oil company’s worker and four IRGC servicemen, all colonels, lost their lives in the crash, he noted.

The general said the cause of the incident is under investigation, Tasnim reported.

Amir-Kabir is the first Iranian facility for the extraction of oil and gas from the Caspian Sea.

This is the second helicopter crash this year in Mazandaran; the first one was an emergency helicopter dispatched to an accident on the Haraz Road, which crashed into high voltage power cables due to poor visibility caused by thick dust while it was trying to land.