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Body of Mi-8 helicopter crew member found at bottom of Lake Onega

The body was found inside the helicopter

MOSCOW, February 5. /TASS/. Rescuers have found the body of a crew member of the Russian emergencies ministry’s Mi-8 helicopter that crashed on Sunday into Lake Onega, local emergencies authority said.

"The first body of the helicopter’s crewmembers has been lifted by divers from the lake bottom. The body was found inside the helicopter," it wrote on the VKontakte social network.

Contact with the helicopter was lost overnight to February 5 while it was on a training flight over Lake Onega in Karelia. There were three crew members on board. Its wreckage was found at a distance of 11 kilometers from the shore. The depth of Lake Onega there is 40 to 50 meters. A team of 95 search-and-rescue specialists, including 29 divers, is working at the site.

According to the Ministry for Emergency Situations, the helicopter was operated by an experienced crew with thousands of hours of flight time under their belt. A criminal case has been opened. Investigators will consider a number of causes for the helicopter crash, including pilot error, weather conditions and equipment malfunction. Operative services told TASS that icing of the helicopter may have caused its crash, suggesting that there was little time to react, given that the crew did not report any problems on board.

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