A U.S. army official reported to Australian air visitors controllers a “significant fire in the vicinity of the crash site,” in response to an audio recording of the dialog broadcast by Nine News tv.
Helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft had been deployed to return from the distant location with the remainder of the injured, Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy mentioned.
One of the injured was present process surgical procedure on the Royal Darwin Hospital, Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles mentioned round six hours after the crash. .
Some have been critically injured and have been being triaged on arrival at Darwin’s airport, she mentioned.
“We acknowledge that this is a terrible incident,” Fyles mentioned. “The Northern Territory government stands by to offer whatever assistance is required.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mentioned solely Americans have been injured in the crash when occurred during Exercise Predators Run, which includes the militaries of the United States, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor.
“The initial reports suggest that the incident involves just U.S. defense force personnel,” Albanese mentioned. “Our focus as a government and as the department of defense is very much on incident response and on making sure that every support and assistance is given at this difficult time.”
Melville is a part of the Tiwi Islands, which together with Darwin are the main focus of the exercise that includes 2,500 troops.
Meville is Indigenous-owned land and is usually coated by tropical woodland. Its inhabitants is round 1,000 largely Indigenous folks.
The Osprey that crashed was one in every of two that had flown from Darwin to Melville on Sunday, Murphy mentioned.
Around 150 U.S. Marines are at present based mostly in Darwin and as much as 2,500 rotate by the town yearly. They’re a part of a realignment of forces in the Asia-Pacific that’s broadly meant to face an more and more assertive China.
The 12-day exercise is scheduled to finish Sept. 7. It includes troops on land, in the ocean and in the air.
Darwin is a giant metropolis by the requirements of Australia’s sparsely populated tropical north with a inhabitants of 150,000. But a number of casualty occasions can check its main hospital’s sources. The hospital has been placed on its highest potential emergency alert, which implies therapy of much less pressing medical instances could possibly be affected, Fyles mentioned.
The U.S. army was additionally collaborating in a multination army exercise in July when 4 Australia personnel have been killed in a military MRH-90 Taipan helicopter crash off the northeast Australian coast.
