KENYA: Kenya minister among helicopter crash victims

Helicopter carrying internal security minister George Saitoti, his deputy and four others crashes near Nairobi.

There is no word on the cause of the crash, in which six people were killed [Al Jazeera]

Kenya's minister for internal security, who once served as the country's vice president, and his deputy are among six people who died when a police helicopter crashed near the capital, according to Kenyan officials. A spokesman said Raila Odinga, the Kenyan prime minister, had been informed of the deaths of George Saitoti, his internal security minister, and Orwa Ojode, his deputy, on Sunday. "We have lost a cabinet minister, his assistant and their bodyguards and the pilots," a police source told AFP news agency. The accident occurred in the Ngong hills on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, a police source told AFP, adding that the reason for the crash was not immediately clear. Al Jazeera's Peter Greste, reporting from Nairobi, said that the area was notorious for bringing down aircraft and that the weather at the moment was quite overcast. "It wouldn't be surprising if there was some sort of pilot error or mechanical failure," said Greste. Witnesses at the scene reported seeing charred bodies, while images of the cracsh scene showed the helicopter reduced to twisted metal. Powerful politician Saitoti, who was a long-serving vice president under former president Daniel Arap Moi, was expected to be a presidential candidate in elections expected to be held by March next year. An ally of President Mwai Kibaki, Saitoti was the leading government voice against al-Shabab, the Somali armed group against which Kenyan forces have been conducting operations inside Somalia since October. He often visited the scenes of grenade attacks carried out by al-Shabab inside Kenya in retaliation and had vowed that Kenya would crush the group. Our correspondent said that while most people in the country were still waking up to the news that Saitoti was dead, he suspected that some would not accept that his death appeared to have been accidental. "Saitoti was one of the most powerful and prominent politicians in the country... Inevitably [Kenyans] will see this as a political assassination because of his powerful position," said Greste. Source: Al Jazeera, Last Modified: 10 Jun 2012 11:04