Italy locates 7 bodies at scorched crash site of helicopter near Tuscany

Italian rescue services resumed a search on Friday for a helicopter that vanished on Thursday with seven people aboard, including four Turkish businessmen, police said. (Reuters)

• Four of the victims worked for a Turkish firm and two Lebanese worked for a consulting firm
• The helicopter was found in a mountainous area on the border between Tuscany and the Emilia Romagna region

ROME: Rescuers have found the bodies of seven people killed in a helicopter crash in Italy, local authorities said on Saturday, two days after the aircraft disappeared from radar screens.
The helicopter had taken off on Thursday from Lucca in Tuscany and was heading toward the northern city of Treviso when it was lost in bad weather over a remote area.
“The rescuers have found dead the seven passengers from the helicopter, four of Turkish and two of Lebanese nationality, who were on a business trip to Italy. As well as the Italian pilot,” the prefect’s office in the city of Modena said in a statement.
The helicopter was found in a mountainous area on the border between Tuscany and the Emilia Romagna region, the statement said.
Col. Alfonso Cipriano, who heads an air force rescue coordination unit that led the search since Thursday, said rescuers were tipped off to the crash site after a mountain runner reported seeing what he thought was a part of the mangled chopper during an excursion on Mount Cusna on Saturday morning.
Air crews confirmed the site and ground crews initially located five bodies, and then the other two, Cipriano told The Associated Press. The location was in a hard-to-reach valley and the chopper remains were hidden to air rescuers from the lush tree cover, but some branches were broken and burned, he said.
Prosecutors have cordoned off the area as part of the investigation into the incident.
“We got the coordinates, we went to the site and found everything burnt. The helicopter is basically inside a valley, near a stream,” a rescuer said in a video posted on the Italian Air Force Twitter account.
The helicopter disappeared from radar screens Thursday morning as it flew over the province of Modena in the Tuscan–Emilian Apennines. Electric storms had been reported in the area at the time, Cipriano said. The chopper was carrying seven people, including four Turkish citizens, two Lebanese and the Italian pilot, from Lucca to Treviso to visit a tissue paper production facility.
The two Lebanese were identified in Lebanon as Shadi Kreidi and Tarek Tayah, both executives at INDEVCO, an international manufacturing and industrial consultancy group. The two were said to be on a business trip.
The Turks on board worked for Turkish industrial group Eczacibasi, which said they were taking part in a trade fair.
Eczacibasi confirmed in a statement with “great pain and sadness” that its director of factories, director of hygienic papers at its Yalova province factory, director of investment projects and production director at its Manisa province factory had died in the crash and relayed their condolences.
The crash site was about 10 kilometers (six miles) from where rescuers initially began searching based on the last cellular pings from the passengers’ phones. Cipriano said it might have taken hours more or even days to locate the site had it not been for the runner’s tip, given the difficult, lush terrain.
The helicopter was an AW119 Koala manufactured by defense group Leonardo, a person close to the matter told Reuters.
The ANSA news agency reported it was owned by transport and aeronautic maintenance company Avio Helicopters, based in Thiene, in northern Italy.
Avio Helicopters was not immediately available for comment.
(With AP and Reuters)