Daily Times

HANOI: A Vietnamese army helicopter carrying three people disappeared from radar on Tuesday, the defence ministry said, sparking fears of another deadly military aviation accident in the communist nation.

Eleven people have been killed in army air accidents this year alone, although the country has a strong civil aviation record. Officials said on Tuesday they were searching for the helicopter after it disappeared in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau with a pilot and two trainees on board. “During training the helicopter lost contact northwest of Dinh mountain,” the ministry said in a statement on its website.

State media said that it was an Airbus EC130 helicopter. The military has suffered three deadly aviation accidents since June. In August a trainee pilot was killed when his L39 fighter jet crashed into a ricefield in the coastal province of Phu Yen.

That accident came just three months after a jet fighter carrying two pilots crashed off the coast of northern Nghe An province, with only one of the pilots rescued. Days later a military search plane deployed to find the missing pilot lost contact and was later found crashed with all nine people on board dead.

In one of the country’s worst military accidents, 19 people were killed after a Russian-made Mi-171 helicopter crashed in Hanoi during a training exercise in July 2014.