Six including a general killed in Brazil chopper collision

Bogota, April 21 (IANS/EFE) A general and five other military personnel were killed Tuesday when two helicopters collided over the southern Brazilian province of Tolima, the Colombian army said.

Five people were wounded in the accident, which took place at 1.45 p.m. and involved a Bell 222 operated by a private contractor and a Colombian air force Huey.

The crash followed a ceremony in the town of Chaparral marking the formation of the South Tolima Joint Task Force, charged with tracking down the leader of Colombia’s largest rebel group.

The dead include the commander of the new unit, General Fernando Joya Duarte, Colonel Carlos Arturo Herrera Castaño and Colonel Juan Gonzalo Lopera Echeverry, and the pilot of the Bell aircraft.

A technical team was already on the scene to determine the cause of the collision.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe paid tribute to the crash fatalities by observing a minute of silence during a forum with students in the southwestern city of Cali.

Joya was appointed to direct operations aimed “at the neutralization of the members of the terrorist redoubts of the FARC” in the southern part of Tolima, the military said prior to Tuesday’s accident.

The new task force is also supposed to focus on finding Alfonso Cano, the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Founded in 1964, the FARC has battled a succession of Colombian governments. The rebel army once had as many as 20,000 fighters, but is now thought to number around 8,000.

–IANS/EFE