- Helicopter landed in fog near kindergarten and caused fire
- One child of 14 confirmed dead
- Interior minister and two senior officials killed
BROVARY, Ukraine, Jan 18 (Portal) – Fourteen people, including Ukraine’s Interior Minister and a child, were killed when a helicopter crashed in fog near a kindergarten outside Kyiv on Wednesday in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a “horrible tragedy.” “ referred to.
Several bodies lay on the floor of a courtyard, their boots sticking out from under blankets, after the helicopter – dubbed the French Super Puma by the air force spokesman – crashed into a building in Brovary, north-east of the capital.
The crash caused a large fire, and an entire side of the local kindergarten building was charred. The governor of the Kyiv region said children and staff were in the kindergarten at the time of the crash just after 08:00 (06:00 GMT).
Officials said it was too early to know what caused the crash. No one spoke of an attack by Russian forces waging war in Ukraine.
“We saw wounded, we saw children. There was a lot of fog here, everything was scattered everywhere. We could hear screams, we ran towards them,” said Hlib, a 17-year-old local resident.
“We took the kids and led them over the fence, away from the nursery because there was a fire, especially the second floor,” he said near the nursery, where people were leaving flowers and stuffed animals at a small makeshift memorial.
The national police chief confirmed that Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi had been killed along with his first deputy, Yevheniy Yenin, and the ministry’s undersecretary. Monastyrskyi was 42 years old and had been Interior Minister since July 2021.
Hours after the crash, the government appointed national police chief Ihor Klymenko as acting interior minister.
The State Ambulance Service put the death toll at 14, including the three helicopter crew and six others on board. One child was killed on the ground and 11 other children were among 25 injured, sources said. The agency previously reported a higher toll, which it revised downward without explanation.
Vitaliy, a 56-year-old resident, said he saw the helicopter fall quickly and crash onto the kindergarten’s grounds in the middle of a residential yard. The debris continued to make its way to a nearby apartment block, he said.
The wreckage of the helicopter later lay crumpled up next to a block of flats, the rotor blades leaning against the entrance.
A hole several feet wide hung over the charred entrance of the two-story kindergarten building.
“There was no explosion. I thought it was the engine of a rocket or something, something very big, like 10 meters high,” Vitaliy said.
“It even got warm in the room I was in,” he said of a large fire that then broke out. “Of course it was scary.”
INVESTIGATION OPENED
“Today a terrible tragedy happened in Brovary, Kyiv region,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app. “The pain is indescribable.”
The State Security Service SBU said it was investigating and considering several possible causes of the crash, including a violation of flight rules, a technical malfunction and the deliberate destruction of the helicopter.
Two witnesses described seeing an object hurled toward the nursery from a north-westerly direction.
“It was about as tall as the houses… those nine-story ones. It was very low and I saw red colors on it,” said one woman.
The crash was another blow to Ukraine, days after 45 people were killed in a block of flats hit during a Russian missile attack on the east-central city of Dnipro.
Air force spokesman Yuri Ihnat said it could take at least several weeks to investigate the disaster.
British Home Secretary Suella Braverman called Monastyrskyi “a leading light in supporting the Ukrainian people” during the Russian invasion and said she was impressed by his determination, optimism and patriotism.
Reporting by Max Hunder in Brovary and Tom Balmforth in Kyiv; Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Edited by Timothy Heritage
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