Officials said that a small plane contracted by the Pentagon crashed in the southern Philippines on Thursday, killing all four people on board, including a member of the US Army.
The Philippine authorities said on Friday that the plane, the Pitchcraft King Air 300, was crashed into the municipality of Ambaan in the Magyndanao Del Sur Province on the southern island of Mindanao. On its way from Cibo County to the city of Cotabato, the capital of an independent Muslim area in Mindanao.
The incident occurred during a “routine mission to support security cooperation activities in the Philippines”, the Indian leadership and the US Pacific Command He said in a statement Friday.
The statement said: “The plane was providing support for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance at the request of our Filipino allies,” the statement said. The killing names have been blocked so that family members can be notified.
The Philippines is the oldest treaty of the United States in Asia. American forces were deployed for years in a military camp in Mindanao to help train Filipino soldiers fighting separatist militants. In 2017, the American Special Forces of the Philippine Army helped, with the militants linked to the Islamic State in the southern city of Marwa.