Ukrainian ministers under 16 deaths in helicopter crash

The Ukrainian Interior Minister was one of the 16 people who were killed when a helicopter fell on the way to the front line into a children's room outside of Kiev on Wednesday morning.

DENYS Monastyrsky was together with nine other Ukrainian officials on board the aircraft of the emergency services that were killed when it snapped into a kindergarten in Browary, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, shortly after 8 a.m.

At least three children were also killed. The crash occurred when the kindergarten had employees and children inside.

The cause of the incident is not yet known, but there was no first signs that the Super Puma helicopter made in France had been shot down. Ukrainian civil servants said they were investigating.

The Ukrainian security service said on Wednesday afternoon that he could not rule out human failure or intentional sabotage.

Mr. Zelensky, President of Ukraine, said the crash was a "terrible tragedy".

"The pain is unspeakable," he wrote in the Messaging app Telegram.

The helicopter met the Dzhereltse kindergarten in Bovary, a Kiev Satellite city that was quickly absorbed by the eastern suburbs of the capital.

The school is a two -story building with a flat roof in the middle of a large rectangular courtyard, which is framed by nine -story apartment blocks.

A few hours after the crash, visible damage indicated that it collided with the facade, which was oriented northwest, how a stone hopped over the roof on the water and exploded a playground and a parking space at the southeast.

"I was at school, it was dark in the classroom. There was a rumbling, a fire kick, the children and I fell to the ground, immediately there was a stench," said a non -mentioned teacher local media.

Witnesses who heard the Explosion from their apartments before they ran outside to help the injured person told the Telegraph that she apparently hit the roof of the kindergarten in the middle of the yard, jumped over the playground and hit the flats in the floor in front of the entrance to one of the children.

It left a fire lane on the roof of the kindergarten and also let a nearby car explode, said Nina Tymanyk, 70.

"It was exactly 08.05. I heard the explosion and came outside. You couldn't see anything, there was smoke everywhere."

Viktor Komesarov, 16, said he was aroused by a pipes followed by an explosion.

"At first I was confused because I heard an explosion, but there was no aviation alarm," he said.

"I looked out of the window and saw my father run into kindergarten. I realized that mom was not at home either. And then she came out of the building with three small children and brought them to our kitchen to treat them."

The children - a boy and two girls aged about six or seven years - remained unharmed except for a few scratches and were later picked up by their parents.

Viktor said he also saw how an employee from kindergarten appeared with a head wound. It was connected by paramedics and then started looking for the children.

Gleb Kasyan, 17, was around the corner when the accident passed. He hurried to the crime scene and found two charred corpses thrown out of the rubble. He started helping the injured, including children.

Pictures of the scene showed black clouds of smoke that rose from a residential area while a fire raged below.

one showed the crumpled remains of the helicopter near a children's playground.

Kyrylo Timoschenko, the deputy head of the presidential office, said that the helicopter had flown to a “hot spot” on the front of the war with Russia.

The deputy of Mr. Monastyrsky and a foreign minister were also in the helicopter.

Mr. Monastyrsky is the highest government official who has died almost a year ago since Russia's invasion into Ukraine.

helicopters are extremely susceptible to the battlefield for the fire at the ground, since they are much slower than jet hunters. They also have little armor because such protection would make the aircraft cell heavier and make the flight more difficult.

Most military helicopters prefer to fly extremely deep to hide behind floor lines or trees in rural areas and buildings in cities and municipalities.

This technique, known as "Terrain Masking", is effective, but leaves the crew very little time to react to mechanical problems with the aircraft, floor fire that hits its goal, or to react environmentally such as power lines that are almost invisible to the pilot.