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During a multi-nation training exercise, a United States Marine Corps aircraft carrying troops crashed on a north Australian island on Sunday, killing three Marines and injuring 20, according to officials.
The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft crashed at around 9:30 a.m., leaving three confirmed dead on Melville Island and five of the 23 people on board airlifted in serious condition 80 kilometers (50 miles) to Darwin, Australia, for hospital treatment.
The statement stated that recovery attempts were still in progress and that the crash’s cause was being looked into.
According to an audio clip of the call shown on Nine News television, a U.S. military representative informed Australian air traffic controllers of a “significant fire in the vicinity of the crash site.”
Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said that helicopters and fixed-wing planes have been dispatched to transport the remaining injured from the remote location.
Some six hours after the collision, Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles announced that one of the injured was receiving surgery at the Royal Darwin Hospital. When they arrived at Darwin’s airport, some of them were badly hurt and were being treated, she said.
When the incident occurred during Exercise Predators Run, which involves the forces of the United States, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and East Timor, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed that only Americans were hurt.
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Crash Prompts Evaluation of Safety Measures
The focus of the exercise, which involves 2,500 troops, is Darwin and the Tiwi Islands, which include Melville. Meville is a piece of indigenous land that is primarily covered with tropical forest. There are about 1,000 individuals there, predominantly Indigenous people.
According to Murphy, one of two Ospreys that had flown on Sunday from Darwin to Melville was the one that crashed. Up to 2,500 U.S. Marines cycle through Darwin year, and there are now 150 of them stationed there.
They are a part of an Asia-Pacific force realignment that is primarily intended to counter China’s growing assertiveness. The 12-day drill is expected to end on September 7. There are troops involved on land, at sea, and in the air.
With a population of 150,000, Darwin is a sizable city by the standards of Australia’s sparsely populated tropical north. Nonetheless, numerous casualty situations might put its main hospital’s resources to the test. According to Fyles, the hospital has been placed on the highest level of emergency alert, which may hinder the treatment of less critical medical cases.
When an army MRH-90 Taipan helicopter crashed off the coast of northeast Australia in July, four Australian service members perished, the U.S. military was also participating in a multi-nation military exercise at the time.
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Source: The Associated Press
