7 bodies found after helicopter crash in Italy
Rescue teams have found the bodies of seven people killed in a helicopter crash in Italy, local authorities said Saturday, two days after the plane disappeared from radar screens.
On Thursday, the plane took off from Lucca in Tuscany for the northern Italian city of Treviso when it disappeared after being exposed to bad weather over a remote area.
The governor's office in Modena said in a statement: "The rescuers found the bodies of the seven passengers on the helicopter, four Turks and two Lebanese who were on a business trip to Italy, in addition to the Italian pilot."
The statement said that the plane was found in a mountainous area on the border between Tuscany and the Emilia-Romagna region.
The area was cordoned off as part of the investigation into the accident.
"We got the coordinates, went to the site and found everything on fire. The helicopter is mainly in a valley, near a stream," one of the rescuers said in a video posted on the Italian air force's Twitter account.
The Ekzecibashi Consumer Products Company, a subsidiary of the major Turkish industrial group, Ekzecibashi, said in a statement that Turkish businessmen were working for it and were attending an exhibition in Italy.
The National News Agency, Lebanon's official news agency, said the other two passengers were Lebanese.
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that the plane was an AW119 koala made by Leonardo Defense Industries.
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