KYIV: Ukraine’s interior minister was among 16 people who were killed when a helicopter crashed near a kindergarten outside the capital Kyiv, officials said Wednesday (Jan 18).
The helicopter went down near a nursery in the town of Brovary on the capital’s eastern outskirts.
Two children were among the dead, officials said. Twenty-two people were hospitalised including 10 children.
It was not immediately clear what caused the helicopter to crash.
Among the dead were several top officials of the interior ministry, including Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky and his first deputy minister Yevgeniy Yenin, said the head of national police Igor Klymenko.
Monastyrsky, responsible for the police and security inside Ukraine, would be the most senior Ukrainian official to die since the war with Russia began.
The 42-year-old father of two was appointed interior minister in 2021.
Videos shared on social media showed a burning building and people could be heard screaming.
“In the city of Brovary, a helicopter fell near a kindergarten and a residential building,” the head of the Kyiv regional administration, Oleksiy Kuleba, said on Telegram.
“At the time of the tragedy, children and employees were in the kindergarten,” he added. “There are casualties.”
He said that medics and police were working at the scene.
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