Sixteen Vietnamese soldiers, including two generals, were killed when the helicopter they were in crashed on an island off the coast of central Vietnam, the military said Thursday. Initial inquiries suggested the Russian-made MI-8 helicopter had hit a military communications mast on the island of Me, around 10 kilometres (six miles) off the coast of Thanh Hoa province, some 200 kilometres south of Hanoi.
"The helicopter immediately exploded after hitting the pylon" shortly after taking off on Wednesday afternoon, military spokesman Major Pham Xuan Huong said.
The spokesman identified the dead as 12 officers, a military journalist with the rank of captain and the three pilots.
One of the generals was the commander of Vietnam's military zone number four based in the central province of Nghe An. Among the other dead officers were five colonels, three lieutenant colonels and two majors.
The state-controlled Vietnam News Agency said the senior officers were inspecting "the combat readiness in the region".
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