A helicopter carrying tourists on a volcano sightseeing trip in Russia’s far east crashed into a lake on Thursday, leaving eight people feared dead and two others in serious condition, rescuers and local officials said.
The Mi-8 helicopter carrying 16 people came down in a nature reserve on the mountainous Kamchatka peninsula, the local government said in a statement. “Eight people were rescued, two of them are in serious condition,” senior Kamchatka regional government official Alexander Zabolichenko said in a statement.
The helicopter was carrying three crew members and 13 passengers, all of them tourists, the government added. Forty rescuers and divers were dispatched to the scene. Acting local health minister Marina Volkova had earlier said nine had survived.
Unnamed medical sources told TASS that the remaining eight were feared dead, but their fate was not immediately confirmed. According to rescuers quoted by TASS, the helicopter sank after the crash and was lying at a depth…