The pilot of a French military helicopter died, and his co-pilot was seriously injured, when their Gazelle crashed while on a training flight near the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan, the army said in a statement on Wednesday.
Lawyers representing relatives of some of the 148 victims, including134 French nationals, who perished in January 2004 when a Paris-bound Flash Airlines flight crashed into the Red Sea shortly after takeoff announced that they are to appeal a decision refusing the reopening of an investigation into the disaster which earlier found it was due to pilot error.
The Antonov turboprop, chartered by the French army as part of its anti-jihadist Opération Barkhane in north-west Africa and carrying ten people, broke up after crashing into the sea near Abidjan airport, leaving four Moldovan nationals dead and injuring six other people, four of them French.
In the first public statement by a member of the family of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who German prosecutors found solely responsible for crashing his plane in the French Alps killing all 150 people on board in March 2015 because of a depressive condition, caused anger among victms' families by claiming a carbon monoxide leak in the cabin was the cause.
The train reportedly crashed into a tree that had been left on the tracks following a heavy thunderstorm near Montpellier, leaving 11 people seriously injured.
Two students were in a serious condition and ten others injured when their coach travelling to Italy overturned on a French motorway near the Swiss border.
The signal was picked up by a French navy search vessel in the eastern Mediterranean where flight MS804 was lost on May 19th for still unexplained reasons.
