Guwahati, April 19: Seventeen people, including two children and three crew members, were killed when a Pawan Hans helicopter crashed at Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh this afternoon.

The helicopter, which was on a regular flight, had taken off from Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport here at 12.50pm, before crashing at 1.55pm just outside the helipad located at an altitude of about 11,000 feet.

Pawan Hans officials here said there were 18 passengers on board, besides four crew members and an official — the pilot, co-pilot, flight attendant, base manager and an engineer.

The co-pilot and the engineer were among the six survivors, who have been admitted to Tawang district hospital in a serious condition.

The operating manager of Pawan Hans here, Simanta Bijoy Deb, said a technical snag was suspected to have led to the crash of the helicopter.

“According to preliminary investigations, a technical snag caused the accident. The weather was good. Pawan Hans officials from New Delhi will carry out a detailed probe to ascertain the cause of the mishap.”

Officials said the Mi72 helicopter caught fire immediately after the crash, killing the 17 persons on the spot.

A rescue operation, mounted soon after, managed to bring out the survivors.

“I saw badly burnt bodies being dragged out while the injured were rushed to hospital,” a witness at Tawang airport told The Telegraph.

According to local residents, the tragedy could probably have been mitigated had there been a fire tender at the helipad, 7km from Tawang.

“The fire brigade is located at Tawang and by the time the fire tenders arrived, it was too late,” a resident said.

The victims have been identified as Anitha, A. Baruah, Tandon, Asif, R. Asif, Zahira, Z. Asif, Master Z. Asif, Arbind Sarma, A.K. Sarawgi, Nidhi Bothra, Col. Sharma, A.K. Tiwari (co-pilot), Dixit (flight attendant), Kulkarni (base manager), T. Moslala and Master Rishi.

The Tawang district administration has declared a holiday tomorrow to condole the deaths.

The survivors are Capt. Barun Gupta, flight engineer P.K. Chaturvedi, Dorjee Wangdi, Rajendra Pal, K. Sarawgi and W. Bothra. But alhough the passenger list mentions the name as W. Bothra, the family claimed he is Nishit Bothra.

The Centre-owned Pawan Hans Helicopters Ltd operates a flight to and from Guwahati and Tawang every day.

It was the first such mishap involving the service in its three years in operation.

The helicopter that crashed today has a capacity of 30 and can fly at a cruise speed of 220km per hour and has an endurance limit of two hours and 10 minutes.

In November last year, 11 Air Force personnel and an army lieutenant colonel were killed when an Air Force Mi-17 helicopter crashed at Tepsha village in the Bomdir area, about 6km from Tawang.

The chopper was on its way to Guwahati from Tawang when it crashed on a wooded hillock.

In June 2009, 13 defence personnel were killed when an aircraft — AN32 — crashed near Mechuka.

In 1997, then junior defence minister N.V.N. Somu and three army officers were killed in a helicopter crash near Tawang.

Arunachal Pradesh has witnessed a large number of air crashes since World War II, when the Allies lost many aircraft in the eastern Himalayan mountains.

The US defence department estimates that about 400 Allied airmen were killed in crashes, caused mainly by poor visibility, along the route.

The flight path over Arunachal Pradesh, used by American aircraft to ferry supplies to Chinese forces battling the invading Japanese, was nicknamed “the Hump” by the Allies.

Wrecks of some of the US aircraft are still found in the Arunachal mountains.