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Mexico copter crash kills 13 during minister’s tour of quake

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SANTIAGO JAMILTEPEC: At least 13 people on the ground, including three children, were killed when a Mexican military helicopter carrying top officials surveying damages from an earthquake crashed in a small town in the southern state of Oaxaca, authorities said on Saturday.


The helicopter, which was carrying Mexico’s interior minister and the state governor, crashed on top of two vans in an open field while trying to land in Santiago Jamiltepec after a tour of damage from a powerful earthquake on Friday, officials said.


The senior officials survived but 12 people at the scene were killed and another died later in a hospital, Oaxaca’s attorney general’s office said in a statement.


Fifteen more people were injured.


The 7.2 magnitude quake left nearly a million homes and businesses without power in Mexico City and the south and damaged at least 50 homes in Oaxaca.


The state, along with Mexico City, is still reeling from earthquakes that caused widespread damage in September and killed at least 471 people.


Some 50 homes in the nearby town of Santiago Jamiltepec sustained structural damage, as well as the town hall and church, but no one was killed in the quake, the interior ministry said.


Oaxaca state authorities opened shelters for those affected, and nearly 6,000 soldiers and federal police were deployed to help with the emergency response. Both Mexico’s National Seismological Service and the US Geological Survey put the quake’s magnitude at 7.2.


It struck at 5:39 pm (2339 GMT) at a relatively deep 24.7 kilometers, said the USGS.


The earthquake came less than six months after two devastating quakes that killed hundreds of people last year. —Agencies


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