SYDNEY: Three men died after two light planes collided midair and crashed into a forested area southwest of Sydney on Saturday.
Australian police, fire and ambulance crews reached the two wreckage sites, located in a semirural bushland area about 55 miles southwest of Sydney, on foot. One plane had burst into flames on impact.
New South Wales Police Acting Superintendent Timothy Calman confirmed that a Cessna 182 carrying two people collided with an ultralight aircraft from a nearby airfield carrying one.
Further details of the victims have not been disclosed.
Witnesses saw “debris coming from the sky” and tried to help, but “there was probably not much that could’ve been done,” Calman said to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation . He noted both crashes, about one kilometer apart, were “not survivable.”
NSW Ambulance Inspector Joseph Ibrahim, part of the emergency response team, said to the ABC, “unfortunately, there was nothing they could’ve done.”
The cause of the crash will be investigated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
3 dead after light planes collided in Australia
https://arab.news/2zkex
3 dead after light planes collided in Australia
Trump ‘very disappointed’ with UK’s Starmer for blocking use of air bases, Telegraph says
- UK PM then said bases could be used in “defensive” operations
- Trump says it took “too long” for Starmer to change his mind
LONDON: Donald Trump said he was “very disappointed” with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not allowing the US to use the Diego Garcia air base to carry out strikes on Iran, the Daily Telegraph quoted the US president as saying in an interview.
Britain had reportedly initially denied the US permission to conduct air strikes from its bases, but on Sunday evening Starmer said he was accepting a request for their use in any “defensive” strikes the US wanted to make against Iranian targets.
In an interview published on Monday Trump told the British newspaper that it took “too long” for Starmer to change his mind.
“That’s probably never happened between our countries before,” he told the Telegraph, adding: “It sounds like he was worried about the legality.”
Trump said Starmer should have approved from the get-go the American use of Diego Garcia — a strategically important US-UK air base in the Indian Ocean — saying Iran was responsible for killing “a lot of people from your country.”
Britain was not involved in the joint US-Israel air strikes on Iran that killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
Since attacks on Iran started on Saturday, Iran has been targeting Gulf countries with missiles, and on Sunday an Iranian-made drone hit Britain’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus, causing limited damage and no casualties.
Trump said it was “useful” that the US would now be able to launch operations from Diego Garcia, as he also criticized a deal Starmer has made over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, where Diego Garcia is based.
