OSLO/COPENHAGEN: A helicopter transporting North Sea oil workers crashed off the coast of western Norway on Friday, killing all 13 people on board, rescue services said.
The Super Puma chopper went down around midday in the archipelago off the coast of Bergen, Norway’s second-biggest city.
The crash took place on the island of Turoey, near Bergen, Kronen said. He did not explain why people had ended up in the water and could not say what kind of helicopter was involved.
He said police had been told the helicopter was carrying 11 passengers and two pilots, but had not been able to verify the figure themselves.
The chopper was transporting workers from a North Sea offshore oil field when it crashed around midday near the shoreline off the coast of Bergen, Norway’s second biggest city.
“They are searching in the hope of finding survivors. So far we have not seen any sign of survivors,” Sola rescue center spokesman Anders Bang Andersen told reporters.
He told AFP that the chopper had been en route to the Bergen airport Flesland when it crashed with 13 people on board, including two crew members.
“The helicopter has been located and we are doing everything possible to rescue the occupants,” he added.
Several witnesses described seeing the aircraft spiral downward, followed by a powerful explosion, and people were seen in the sea.
Norwegian media posted photos of huge billows of smoke. Eyewitness Rebecca Andersen told the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang that the helicopter’s “rotor blades came rushing toward us.”
“Pieces (of the helicopter) flew into the air,” a local resident said, adding that she saw a rotor blade detach.
Some media outlets reported that people had been rescued, but the reports were contradictory and Bang Andersen was not able to confirm or deny them.
“Horrible reports of a helicopter crash,” Prime Minister Erna Solberg tweeted. “I’m being continuously briefed on the rescue operations.”
Live footage showed leisure boats rushing toward the scene, where thick black smoke was billowing into the sky.
The accident took place around noon (1000 GMT), and more than an hour later boats could be seen criss-crossing across the water as helicopters hovered overhead. Divers were seen at the site, and ambulances were parked on shore.
On Twitter, police urged people to refrain from using drones in the area.
The helicopter was returning from the Gullfaks B platform, in one of Norway’s biggest offshore oil fields, which is operated by state-owned Statoil.
Media reports had initially spoken of up to 17 people on board.
Helicopter crashes off Norway; 13 dead
Helicopter crashes off Norway; 13 dead
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
