Two Dead, One Missing as Greek Navy Helicopter Crashes in Aegean

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Two Greek navy airmen died on Thursday and a third was missing after their helicopter crashed into a small islet in the Aegean Sea during an exercise, the armed forces said.

"Today is a day of grief for the Greek people, the nation and armed forces," Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said in a statement while Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras also expressed his condolences.

"Greek officers have entered the pantheon of heroes in peacetime," Kammenos said.

The Agusta Bell helicopter had taken off from a frigate in a pre-dawn exercise and was last known to be flying at 400 feet (122 meters) but had given no sign of trouble before the crash, Greek armed forces chief Evangelos Apostolakis told a briefing earlier Thursday.

Commando units recovered the wreckage on the Dodecanese islet of Kinaros, the defense ministry said, and the general staff said two bodies had been recovered.

"The (helicopter's) signal was lost at (0045 GMT)... and a thermal signal was located at (0240) on a mountainous area on Kinaros," a navy spokesman told the briefing.

"We have not found all the pieces of the helicopter yet... the area is very hard to access," Apostolakis said.

Kammenos cut short his participation in a NATO summit in Brussels and returned to Athens because of the incident.

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