MOSCOW: A helicopter with 22 people aboard, most of them tourists, has gone missing in Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula in the far east, regional authorities said Saturday.
“Today at about 1615 (0415 GMT) communication was lost with a Mi-8 helicopter...which had 22 people on board, 19 passengers and three crew members,” Kamchatka Governor Vladimir Solodov said in a video posted on Telegram.
Rescue teams in helicopters have been searching into the night for the missing aircraft, focusing on a river valley that the helicopter was due to fly along, Russian authorities said.
The Mi-8 is a Soviet-designed military helicopter that is widely used for transport in Russia.
The missing helicopter had picked up passengers near the Vachkazhets ancient volcano in a scenic area of the peninsula known for its wild landscapes and active volcanoes.
A source in the emergency services told TASS news agency that the helicopter disappeared from radar almost immediately after taking off and the crew did not report any problems.
The local weather service said that there was poor visibility in the area of the airport.
Accidents involving planes and helicopters are very frequent in Russia’s far eastern region, which is sparsely populated and where there is often harsh weather.
In August 2021, a Mi-8 helicopter with 16 people on board including 13 tourists crashed into a lake in Kamchatka due to poor visibility, killing eight.
In July the same year, a plane crashed as it came in to land on the peninsula, with 22 passengers and 6 crew aboard, all of whom were killed.
Helicopter with 22 aboard goes missing in Russia’s Kamchatka
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Helicopter with 22 aboard goes missing in Russia’s Kamchatka
Al-Shabab extremists are greatest threat to peace in Somalia and the region, UN experts say
- The UN Security Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to extend authorization for the African Union’s “support and stabilization” force in Somalia until Dec. 31, 2026
UNITED NATIONS: The Al-Shabab extremist group remains the greatest immediate threat to peace and stability in Somalia and the region, especially Kenya, UN experts said in a report released Wednesday.
Despite ongoing efforts by Somali and international forces to curb operations by Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab, “the group’s ability to carry out complex, asymmetric attacks in Somalia remains undiminished,” the experts said.
They said the threat comes not only from Al-Shabab’s ability to strike — including within the capital, Mogadishu, where it attempted to assassinate the president on March 18 — but from its sophisticated extortion operations, forced recruitment and effective propaganda machine.
The UN Security Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to extend authorization for the African Union’s “support and stabilization” force in Somalia until Dec. 31, 2026. The force includes 11,826 uniformed personnel, including 680 police.
The extremist group poses a significant threat to neighboring Kenya “by conducting attacks that vary from attacks with improvised explosive devices, which predominantly target security personnel, to attacks on infrastructure, kidnappings, home raids and stealing of livestock,” the experts said.
This year, Al-Shabab averaged around six attacks a month in Kenya, mostly in Mandera and Lamu counties, which border Somalia in the northeast, the panel said.
The experts said Al-Shabab’s goal remains to remove Somalia’s government, “rid the country of foreign forces and establish a Greater Somalia, joining all ethnic Somalis across east Africa under strict Islamic rule.”
The panel of experts also investigated the Islamic State’s operations in Somalia and reported that fighters were recruited from around the world to join the extremist group, the majority from east Africa. At the end of 2024, they said the group known as ISIL-Somalia had a fighting force of over 1,000, at least 60 percent of them foreign fighters.
“Although small in terms of numbers and financial resources compared with Al-Shabab, the group’s expansion constituted a significant threat to peace and security in Somalia and the broader region,” the panel said.
