(Daily Mail) – Five Americans were killed in a helicopter crash today while serving with a peacekeeping force in Egypt.
The five US nationals were among seven victims of the air disaster in Egypt’s Sinai desert which also killed a French national and a Czech citizen, an Israeli source said.
The source said the crash involved the Multinational Force and Observers, a peacekeeping force co-founded by Israel in 1979 when it signed a peace deal with Egypt.
An Egyptian official said the crash appeared to be caused by a technical failure.
An MFO official, Brad Lynch, said the organisation was ‘actively investigating an incident involving one of our helicopters today’.
Around 450 US troops are deployed in the region under the auspices of the MFO, which was created after the Carter administration helped to broker the peace treaty in 1979.
However, a report in May 2020 said that Donald Trump’s then-defense secretary Mark Esper was looking to withdraw US troops from the peninsula.
The Wall Street Journal report said that officials in the State Department and the Israeli government were opposed to the withdrawal.
The US also pledges to provide one-third of the MFO’s annual operating expenses, the organisation says.
