ROME, June 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The search for a helicopter which disappeared in Italy with seven people on board intensified Friday after the weather improved, a spokesman for the Alpine rescue service said.
The helicopter was carrying a pilot and six passengers — four Turkish nationals and two Lebanese, according to Italian media reports.
It went missing in a sparsely populated mountainous area in northern Italy Thursday, but bad weather hampered the first attempts to find it.
Italian officials said the region where the helicopter was lastly spotted was around the San Pellegrino village, located on a “rough land.”
Seven helicopters from the air force, police and medical rescue services were combing the area Friday.
“It is not easy, if a helicopter falls amongst trees, in this season the branches close over it and it is complicated to see it from the sky,” the spokesman said.
Italian firefighters and the Alpine rescue service said the searches began Thursday after the private chopper disappeared from radar screens while flying over the province of Modena, in the Tuscan–Emilian Apennines.
The crews searching Friday used high-tech instruments to detect cellular pings even in areas without cell coverage, the firefighters said in a statement.
Turkish TV channel NTV said the helicopter took off from the city of Lucca heading for Treviso and that the four Turks on board worked for Turkish industrial group Eczacibasi.
Eczacibasi said its four employees were in Italy to take part in a paper technologies trade fair and were traveling to a tissue paper production facility. In a statement, the company said it was in contact with authorities in Italy, the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Turkish Embassy in Italy, and expressed hope that it would receive “good news” as soon as possible. — NNN-AGENCIES
