"It is absolutely false" that jihadist fire led to the collision between the two helicopters that caused the death of 13 French soldiers in Mali, said Friday, November 29, General François Lecointre, interviewed by RFI.
The chief of staff of the French army denied this statement put forward the day before by the Islamic State organization, and affirmed that "what is true is that there was a collision in an operation of very complex fight, which requires (...) a very fine coordination. "
"There was no attack by the jihadists who were pursued and marked on the ground.There was no withdrawal of a device in the face of a jihadist fire," said General Lecointre . "The French army is telling the truth: we owe it to our soldiers and to the families of our companions who have died (...) The investigations are not finished, the black boxes will be exploited to have the precise details of the how our soldiers died. "
The members of the commando team who were in one of the accident aircraft, the Cougar helicopter, were an extraction crew, present as is the procedure to support the crews of the Tiger attack helicopters in case the one of them should arise urgently.
These commandos, members of the alpine hunters "did not come to be embarked or disembarked from their aircraft," said the general.
The two helicopters, a Tiger and a Cougar, collided during a fight against jihadists Monday night in Mali. The loss of 13 soldiers is one of the biggest for the French army since the attack against the French headquarters Drakkar in Beirut in 1983, which had killed 58 people.
With AFP