Four die in plane crash in Swiss Alps
A small tourist plane has crashed over the village of Blatten in canton Valais, southwestern Switzerland. Four people – two Swiss and two Austrians – died.
At 12.25pm on Saturday the emergency centre of the cantonal police received a call indicating that a plane had gone down near the 3,000-metre Gletscherspitze peak. A few minutes later the same caller informed the centre that smoke was coming out of the plane.
The Lötschental fire brigade and rescue services were taken to the site by Air Zermatt helicopters. The plane’s occupants were already dead. The cantonal police and the Swiss Security Investigation Service also visited the site to carry out the usual investigations.
The small plane had taken off from the Reichenbach aerodrome in Bern and was scheduled to return there. The crash occurred on the side of a mountain and the wreckage was balanced precariously, according to imagesExternal link broadcast by Swiss public broadcaster, RTS.
The victims are two Swiss (aged 66 and 50) and two Austrians (aged 50 and 46).
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