Kenya’s Internal Security Minister George Saitoti, who planned to run for the presidency next year, was killed yesterday with five others in a police helicopter crash near Nairobi, officials said.
Most probably the crash was caused by bad weather
Mr Saitoti, a veteran politician of 66, was a key figure in his country’s fight against Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab insurgents in neighbouring Somalia.
He died along with Joshua Orwa Ojode, the assistant minister for internal security, the two pilots – including a woman – and two bodyguards when the helicopter came down in the Ngong hills outside the capital.
President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga paid tribute to Mr Saitoti, who played a prominent role in the campaign against Somali insurgents, blamed for a series of terror attacks and kidnappings on Kenyan soil.
“The government will ensure a thorough probe” into the cause of the crash, Mr Odinga told journalists at the crash site.
Mr Saitoti was on his way to attend a religious ceremony in western Kenya when the Eurocopter came down in the Kibuku forest around 8.30 a.m. shortly after taking off from Nairobi’s Wilson airport.
An AFP journalist on the scene saw six bodies charred beyond recognition being removed from the wreckage. The helicopter was entirely destroyed. Wads of bank notes lay scattered at the crash site. Investigators from the police, the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) and the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority sealed off the scene to try and establish the cause of the accident.
“Most probably it was caused by bad weather, it was foggy at the time it went down,” a police officer involved in the investigation told AFP. Another police source said Kenya had acquired the aircraft, which was fitted with state-of-the-art equipment, just five months ago.
A witness at the scene described the helicopter as having “hovered up there and looked like it was turning back” before coming down. Another witness, farmer Ole Tolei, said that he had seen the aircraft “flying very low. It came down suddenly and we heard a loud explosion, and then it burst into flames.”