Five Troops Fatally Injured, Five More Hurt

A NATO Puma Mk2 helicopter went down while landing at the headquarters of the Resolute Support Mission that is training security forces in Afghanistan on Sunday. Five NATO troops were fatally injured, according to officials. Five others received lesser injuries.

A statement from the Mission's leadership did not give the nationalities of those aboard, according to a report in The Military Times, but the British Defense Ministry said that two of those fatally injured were RAF personnel.

The statement released by the mission said that the accident was a "non-hostile incident."

A witness named Najibullah, who like many in Afghanistan uses only one name, said the helicopter appeared to impact a monitoring balloon as it made its approach to land. The security guard said that the cable from the balloon seemed to become entangled in the aircraft's main rotor. U.S. Army Col. Brian Tribus, the spokesman in Afghanistan for U.S. and NATO forces, said in a statement that the monitoring balloon had been severed from its mooring without providing additional details, and that there had been an "incident" involving a NATO aircraft and a balloon "in the vicinity of the Resolute Support base" in central Kabul.

(Image from file. Not accident aircraft)

FMI: www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_113694.htm