January 18, (THEWILL) – Ukrainian officials said 18 people including Ukraine’s interior minister, other senior ministry officials and three children, died on Wednesday morning, when a helicopter crashed near a nursery outside Kyiv.
The regional governor said 29 people were also hurt including 15 children, when the helicopter came down in a residential area in Brovary, on the capital’s northeastern outskirts.
Media reports that several dead bodies draped in foil blankets lay in a courtyard near the damaged nursery. Emergency workers were at the scene. Debris was scattered over a playground.
National police chief, Ihor Klymenko, said Interior Minister, Denys Monastyrskyi, had been killed alongside his first deputy, Yevheniy Yenin, and other officials in a helicopter belonging to the state emergency service.
Kyiv region governor, Oleksiy Kuleba, wrote on Telegram that “there were children and staff in the nursery at the time of this tragedy.”
Officials did not give an immediate explanation of the cause of the helicopter crash.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, whose troops invaded Ukraine last February and Ukrainian officials made no reference to any Russian attack in the area at the time.
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