The Vagaries of War
"We saw wounded people, we saw children. There was a lot of fog here, everything was strewn all around.""We could hear screams, we ran towards them.""We took the children and passed them over the fence, away from the nursery as it was on fire, especially the second floor."Glib, 17-year-old local resident
Firefighters inspect a building in Brovary damaged by the crash. The building housed a school for young children. (Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada) |
During
war the civilian casualty rate is unpredictable, painful and
devastating. Unusual, inexplicable incidents occur, far removed from
what is expected in a theatre of war. An accident that seems to come out
of nowhere with startling consequences begs for an explanation. This
one certainly does. An investigation has been ordered, to try to
determine the cause of a helicopter carrying Ukraine's interior minister
and other government dignitaries that crashed in a suburb of the
capital, Kyiv.
To
add to the perturbation and produce a truly black fog of tragedy, in
its unexpected out-of-control descent, the helicopter crashed into a
multiple-story nursery where children were being looked after.
Altogether the crash killed 14 people, among them a child. The nursery
building's entire side was left a charred, gaping vacuum above its
entrance. The helicopter rotor blades rested there.
Debris
from the crash was strewn over the playground with wreckage crumpled
close to an apartment block. No mention of Russian attack involvement
was made by dismayed government officials inspecting the carnage. Too
early to determine what might have caused the crash, to begin with. An
investigation has been ordered by President Zelenskyy into the "terrible tragedy. The pain is unspeakable", he said.
Ukraine's
State Security Service, the SBU, would consider possible causes that
would include a breach of flight rules, a technical malfunction, and
possibly intentional destruction. Which would, needless to say, involve
deliberate sabotage. There are known to be those on either side of the
conflict who infiltrate with the intention of creating treacherous
subversion.
An
observer, 56-year-old Vitaly, watched as the aircraft fell, then
crashed into the nursery grounds before debris was hurled into the block
of flats. "I thought it was the engine from a rocket or something like that, something very large",
he explained, shocked at what he had witnessed. The vagaries of
conflict and incidents associated, however tangentially, with war never
fail to shock as one's world is turned upside-down.
Of
the dozens of injured, many were children suffering burns in the wake
of the Super Puma helicopter's crash in the fog in Brovary on the
outskirts of Kyiv. The most senior Ukrainian official to lose his life
in this war, yet another casualty along with his first deputy and other
ministry officials in the helicopter operated by the state emergency
service.
Ukrainian
state emergency services went to work at the crash site that became a
frantic rescue effort. The dead lay in a courtyard, some in uniform,
covered with foil blankets draped over them. "Unfortunately, the sky does not forgive mistakes, as pilots say, but
it's really too early to talk about the causes", air force spokesperson
Yuriy Ihnat said of the investigation that would take several weeks to conclude cause.
Authorities say a helicopter carrying senior Ukrainian officials has crashed near the country's capital, Kyiv, killing at least 14, down from an earlier figure of 18. Here, a view of the scene where the crash occurred in Brovary, about 25 kilometres northeast of Kyiv, on Wednesday. (Daniel Cole/The Associated Press) |
Labels: Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian Helicopter Crash
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