Helicopter crashes in Russian forest killing four people including doctor and paramedics

Four people have been killed in in with the cause unknown.

A doctor and paramedics were on board the Mi-2 helicopter that went down in ’s central Kirov region on Saturday, killing all four people in the aircraft, emergency officials reported. It has been used recently for transporting wounded soldiers. The helicopter crashed in a forest near the village of Beleenki, about 435 miles east of Moscow, according to an online statement from Russia’s Emergency Ministry.

Images showed a scene of devastation with the burnt out wreckage amid charred trees and smoke still rising. Rescuers initially only found three bodies at the site of the , but later located the fourth, the ministry said. The authorities didn’t immediately say what may have caused the crash.

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The Mi-2 is a small, Soviet-designed helicopter used for a variety of purposes. The Polish-made helicopter in the crash had been in service for almost 38 years, data from Russia’s Civil Aircraft Register seen by TASS showed. In the past few years, it has been operated by Vyatkaavia as medical evacuation aircraft taking wounded people from battlefields.

According to preliminary information, there was a pilot, a doctor and two paramedics on board, Governor Alexander Sokolov said. No patients were on the flight though. It comes during the war which has now seen a teenager killed in Kyiv during a Russian drone attack which lasted for hours officials said. Five people were also reportedly killed in a missile attack on central Ukraine that also left at least 21 injured.

According to Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko, the drone slammed into a 25-story apartment block Friday night in the city’s west, killing a 15-year-old girl and injuring five others. Ukraine’s Emergency Service said 100 people were evacuated following the strike, which damaged several apartments on the building’s upper floors.

Serhii Popko, who heads Kyiv’s local military administration, said that Russian forces overnight pummeled the city for 7 1/2 hours. Air raid sirens wailed throughout the night, and Popko said that Ukrainian air defence shot down up to a dozen Russian drones.

In Russia, air defence brought down 17 Ukrainian drones over four regions near the border, the defence ministry in Moscow reported Saturday. Also according to the Russian defence ministry, Moscow’s troops have continued eking out battlefield gains in Ukraine’s industrial east, capturing the hamlet of Oleksandropil in the Donetsk region.

Russia has been conducting a ferocious months long campaign along the eastern front in Ukraine, gradually compelling Kyiv to surrender ground. But Russia has struggled to push Ukrainian forces out of its Kursk border region following an incursion almost three months ago.