SANTIAGO JAMILTEPEC, Mexico: At least 13 people on the ground, including three children, were killed when a Mexican military helicopter carrying top officials surveying damage from an earthquake crashed in a small town in the southern state of Oaxaca, authorities said on Saturday.
The helicopter, which was carrying Mexico’s interior minister and the state governor, crashed on top of two vans in an open field while trying to land at night in Santiago Jamiltepec after a tour of damage from Friday’s powerful quake.
The senior officials survived but 12 people at the scene were killed and another died later in a hospital, Oaxaca’s attorney general’s office said in a statement. Another 15 people were injured.
Luis Cabrera, a civil protection official at the scene, said authorities were still investigating the cause of the crash.
The 7.2 magnitude quake knocked out electricity in Santiago Jamiltepec, about 28 miles (45 km) from the tremor’s epicenter, leaving the town in darkness Friday night.
A journalist on board the flight told local TV that the helicopter had flown in over a clearing next to homes, raising a huge dust cloud before it crash landed.
At a home near the accident site, family members gathered to mourn their loved ones after officials returned their bodies. Many lashed out in anger at authorities.
“The governor was supposedly coming to help, but what was the help, the aid, we received? This was the aid,” said Eduardo Juarez, a relative of one victim.
Mexico’s defense minister, General Salvador Cienfuegos, arrived at the scene on Saturday and spoke with locals, offering apologies for the accident, local TV showed.
The earthquake left nearly a million homes and businesses without power in Mexico City and the south and damaged at least 50 homes in Oaxaca.
The state, along with Mexico City, is still reeling from earthquakes in September that killed at least 471 people and caused widespread damage.
Mexico helicopter crash kills 13 on ground in wake of earthquake
Mexico helicopter crash kills 13 on ground in wake of earthquake
Rubio meets Caribbean leaders as US raises pressure on Cuba
Basseterre: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will seek to address Caribbean leaders' concerns about Cuba at a summit on Wednesday, as Washington ramps up pressure on the communist island fresh after removing Venezuela's president.
Rubio, a Cuban-American who has spent his political career hoping to topple Havana's government, is also looking for sustained cooperation on Venezuela and troubled Haiti as he takes part in the summit of the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, which does not include Cuba.
After attending President Donald Trump's State of the Union address to Congress, Rubio flew overnight to join the summit in Saint Kitts and Nevis, a sun-kissed former British colony of fewer than 50,000 people.
Rubio became the highest-ranking US official ever to visit the tiny country, the birthplace of one of the United States' founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton.
Trump has reoriented foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere through his "Donroe Doctrine" in which he has vowed unrepentant intervention to advance US interests.
After US forces snatched Venezuela's leftist leader Nicolas Maduro in a January 3 raid, the Latin American country has been forced to cut off its crucial oil shipments to Cuba.
This has plunged Cuba into a further economic morass with fuel shortages and rolling blackouts.
Speaking at the opening of the CARICOM summit on Tuesday, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned that a further deterioration in Cuba will impact stability across the Caribbean and trigger migration -- the top political concern for Trump.
"Humanitarian suffering serves no one," Holness said. "A prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba."
Plea for 'stability'
Holness said that Jamaica believed in democracy and free markets -- a rebuke to the communist system in Havana -- but called for "humanitarian relief" for Cubans.
"Jamaica supports constructive dialogue between Cuba and the United States aimed at de-escalation, reform and stability," he said.
"We believe there is space, perhaps more space now than in years past, for pragmatic engagement."
The summit's host, Saint Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Terrance Drew, also called for humanitarian backing to Cuba, saying: "A destabilized Cuba will destabilize all of us."
A medical doctor, Drew studied for seven years in Cuba and said friends there have told him of food scarcity, power outages and garbage strewn in the streets.
"I can only feel the pain of those who treated me so well when I was a student," he said.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Cuba almost continuously since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
Since becoming the top US diplomat, Rubio has publicly toned down calls for regime change, and Washington has quietly held discussions with Havana.
Trump and Rubio have threatened sanctions against countries that sell oil to Cuba but stopped short of enacting some measures pushed by Cuban-American hardline critics of Havana, such as prohibiting the transfer of remittances.
'Elephant in the room'
Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, said she empathized with the Cuban people but took issue with her Jamaican counterpart's remarks.
"We cannot advocate for others to live under communism and dictatorship," she said.
She also criticized CARICOM countries for their reticence, at least publicly, to back what she called the "elephant in the room" -- US intervention in Venezuela.
Trinidad and Tobago, whose coast is visible from Venezuela, gave access to the US military in the run-up to the operation that removed Maduro.
The deposed Venezuelan leader faces US charges of narco-trafficking, which he denies.
Persad-Bissessar thanked Trump, Rubio "and the US military... for standing firm against narco-trafficking, human and arms smuggling."
The Trump administration has been carrying out deadly strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, drawing criticism by those who say the attacks are legally and ethically dubious.
The Trinidadian prime minister praised the US approach and credited it with bringing down her country's homicide rate by helping cut the flow of firearms from Venezuela.
