U.S. Army helicopter
down off Philippines

12 American soldiers were
aboard when it crashed;
no survivors have been found

---

Star-Bulletin staff and news services

WASHINGTON >> A U.S. Army helicopter crashed at sea in the Philippines today with 12 Americans aboard.

A search by another U.S. helicopter and other American military aircraft found no survivors, but the search was continuing, said Navy Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

There were no initial indications that the helicopter was brought down by hostile fire, Davis said.

A Camp Smith spokesman said late this morning that there was no immediate word if any soldiers from Hawaii were on the helicopter.

Earlier this month, about 660 U.S. troops, including 160 U.S. Army Special Forces, began training Filipino soldiers in anti-terrorist tactics and techniques. Many of the special forces were from Hawaii and Camp Smith.

The CH-47 Chinook was flying from the island of Basilan in the southern Philippines to the tiny islet of Mactan, Davis said. It crashed in a gulf north of Basilan at 8:30 a.m. Hawaii time (2:30 a.m. tomorrow in the Philippines), he said.

The air base at Mactan is a logistics base for the anti-terrorist training operation on Basilan.

The Chinook was flying in tandem with another CH-47 at the time it went down. The second CH-47 conducted an aerial search and was being joined by other American military aircraft.

Davis identified the crash site as a gulf about 120 miles north-northeast of the city of Zamboanga, off the coast of the southern island of Mindanao.

Col. Alexander Aleo, commander of the Philippine forces training with the Americans on Basilan, said the flight had been uneventful before the crash. “There was no mechanical trouble reported or any rebel activity that might have affected their flight,” Aleo said. “Everything looked normal.”

The Abu Sayyaf terrorist group is holding missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan., and Filipino nurse Deborah Yap on Basilan.

In another developement, the U.S. began flying spy planes over the southern Philippines, a senior defense official said.

The official, who asked to not be identified, said U.S. Navy EP-3 "Orion" surveillance planes were gathering information to complement the contingent of American soldiers on the ground.

The official did not say where the aircraft were based. But the Washington Post quoted the official as saying surveillance planes had begun flights from Okinawa and elsewhere in the region.

The four-engine turboprop planes are similar to an EP-3 that was involved in a collision with a Chinese jet fighter in international waters off China last April. The crippled U.S. aircraft landed at a Chinese military base and the crew was held for a period before being released in a major controversy between Washington and Beijing.

The official told the Post that by later this spring, the information gained from the spy planes combined with better trained and equipped Filipino troops would "jolt" the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas.

Images and signals gained from the air would be combined with ground patrols to produce better intelligence, the official was quoted as saying. The intelligence could be used "to create a predictive pattern about where these people are likely to go, as opposed to getting a sighting report and going out and chasing them," the official told the Post.