One U.S. service member and three defense contractors were killed when a surveillance flight crashed in the southern Philippines on Thursday.
The aircraft was conducting a routine mission ‘providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support at the request of our Philippine allies’ when it crashed in a rice field, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said.
The bodies of the four people were retrieved from the wreckage in Ampatuan town, said Ameer Jehad Tim Ambolodto, a safety officer of Maguindanao del Sur.
Indo-Pacific Command said the names of the crew were being withheld pending family notifications. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines also confirmed the crash of a light plane in Maguindanao del Sur province
Windy Beaty, a provincial disaster-mitigation officer, told The Associated Press that she received reports that residents saw smoke coming from the plane and heard an explosion before the aircraft plummeted to the ground about half a mile from a cluster of farmhouses.
Nobody was reported injured on or near the crash site, which was cordoned off by troops, Beaty said.
A water buffalo on the ground was killed as a result of the plane crash, local officials said.
One U.S. service member and three defense contractors were killed when a surveillance flight crashed in the Philippines
Indo-Pacific Command said the names of the crew were being withheld pending family notifications. The cause of the crash remains under investigation
U.S. forces have been deployed in a Philippine military camp in the country’s south for decades to help provide advise and training to Filipino forces battling Muslim militants.
The region is the homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
A flurry of naval drills surrounding the Philippines involving the United States and its partners has prompted complaints from Beijing, which claims the entire South China Sea and accused Manila of colluding with others to destabilize the region.
The U.S. 7th Fleet based in Japan said forces from , Japan, the Philippines, and the U.S. conducted a ‘multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activity’ within the Philippines´ Exclusive Economic Zone on Wednesday.
Such drills ‘strengthen the interoperability of our defense/armed forces doctrines, tactics, techniques, and procedures,’ the fleet said in a news release.
The maneuvers were taking place within the Philippines’ zone, but the fleet gave no details on the exact location.
Meanwhile, Tian Junli, spokesperson for China’s Southern Theater Command, accused the Philippines of ‘colluding with outside countries to organize ‘so-called joint patrols’, which he said ‘destabilize the region,’ Chinese state media said on Thursday.
Tian said the Philippines actions were ‘an attempt to endorse its `illegal claims´ in the South China Sea and ‘undermine China’s maritime rights and interests.’
He specifically pointed to U.S.-Philippines joint patrols on Tuesday and said China had carried out its own patrols in the region on Wednesday.