Cause Pinned Down in Iraq Copter Crash
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NICOSIA, Cyprus — A committee investigating a helicopter crash that killed Iraq’s defense minister determined that the crew lost control of the chopper during a sandstorm, the official Iraqi News Agency reported Sunday.
The agency said the committee’s report blamed “extraordinarily bad weather conditions and lack of visibility coupled with a sandstorm” for the crash that killed Gen. Adnan Khairallah.
There were no indications, it said, of mechanical trouble, explosion or fire aboard the U.S.-made Bell military helicopter, which had flown for only 603 hours when it crashed in northern Iraq on May 5.
Khairallah, who was deputy armed forces commander in chief and a close confidante of President Saddam Hussein, died along with six others on a flight to Baghdad from a mountain resort near Mosul, 280 miles northwest of the capital.
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