Russia's government says three crew members have been killed in a helicopter crash in Siberia.
The Emergency Situations Ministry branch in Siberia said on September 3 that the bodies of all three crew members were recovered at the crash site of the Mi-8 helicopter in a remote area of the Irkutsk region.
The ministry said the aircraft, operated by Russia's state-controlled Irkutsk-based Angara Airlines, was on a surveying mission when it vanished from the radar screens of air-traffic controllers on September 2.
The crash occurred the same day that a similar Mi-8 helicopter, leased by Afghanistan's Defense Ministry and operated by a Moldovan company, crashed on takeoff from a military base near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif.
At least 10 Afghan soldiers and two Ukrainian crew members were killed in that crash.
On August 4, another Mi-8 helicopter crashed in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, killing 18 people aboard.
The Mi-8 helicopter is used by military and civilian operators in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.
Mi-8 operators are often hired for security operations from the Balkans to Afghanistan and for international aid operations of the United Nations.
Previous crashes of Mi-8 helicopters have been blamed on poor maintenance and disregard for safety rules.
