Brovary, Ukraine: Sixteen people including Ukraine’s interior minister and other senior officials were killed on Wednesday when a helicopter crashed in a suburb outside Kyiv, the country’s national police chief said.
The helicopter came down near a kindergarten in the town of Brovary on the capital’s eastern outskirts. Two children were among the dead and 10 were in hospital, officials said
Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky speaks to reporters in 2022.Credit:AP
Officials gave no immediate account of the cause of the crash and there was no immediate comment from Russia, which invaded Ukraine last February.
Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, responsible for police and security inside Ukraine, would be the most senior Ukrainian official to die since the war began.
National police chief Ihor Klymenko said Monastyrsky had been killed along with his deputy and other senior ministry officials.
“There were children and … staff in the nursery at the time of this tragedy. Everyone has now been evacuated. There are casualties,” Kyiv region governor Oleksiy Kuleba wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky (left) talks with Ukrainian troops in 2022.
Reuters journalists at the scene saw several dead bodies draped in foil blankets in a courtyard near the building damaged by the crash.
Videos shared on social media showed a burning building and people could be heard screaming. Reuters was unable immediately to verify the footage.
“We are finding out information about casualties and the circumstances,” the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, wrote on Telegram.
Reuters
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