A French pilot and his Nigerian copilot, as well as a Ghanaian, have been identified as the three persons killed in a helicopter crash at West Cape Three Points in the Western Region in Ghana Thursday, the state-run Ghana News Agency (GNA) reported Friday.
"The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has identified the nationalities of the three persons who died from the Lukoil plane crash," the report stated.
Their bodies have been deposited at the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital morgue in Takoradi, 230 km west of the national capital while a search is still on for a missing victim.
Four persons who survived the accident have been sent to the West Africa Rescue Clinic at Chapel Hill, popularly known as SOS Clinic, in Takoradi and are said to be responding to treatment.
They are three Ghanaians and one British whose names were not given.
The Public Relations Officer of Two Garrison Command of the Ghana Air Force (GAF), Captain Linda Oboh, told the GNA Friday the rescue team was still on the site looking for the missing person.
She said parts of the wreckage of the crashed helicopter were found last night.
Oboh said officials from the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority would move to the rescue site this morning to assess the situation.
A press statement issued by the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum Friday and copied to Xinhua confirmed the incident.
It said a service helicopter flying under the name Black Hawk and operated by Volta River Aviation Limited crashed off the Ghana coast in waters approximately four nautical miles south of Takoradi, the Western regional capital.
Ghana has recorded a few air crashes since May 8, 1997, when a Ghana Air Force jet crashed into a nearby bush off the main runway at the Kotoka International Airport, killing the pilot.
The jet had escorted former President Jerry John Rawlings's aircraft which had returned from Botswana and was attempting to land when it crashed.
Then on June 8, 2000, a Fokker 27 aircraft on a normal domestic flight from Tamale, the northern regional capital, with 52 passengers and crew on board crashed at the threshold of the KIA on landing, killing six of the passengers instantly.
The third crash occurred in the evening of Saturday, June 2, 2012, when a Boeing 727-200 cargo plane which had taken off from Lagos, Nigeria, and carrying general goods, rammed into a Benz bus on the 37 Military Hospital-Burma Camp road, killing all 10 passengers on the bus. Endi
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