Army, IAF commandos recover bodies of five more Uttarakhand copter crash victims

Five more bodies were found on Wednesday by army and air force commandos searching the narrow valley where a helicopter crashed in Uttarakhand with 20 people on board.

A total of 17 bodies have now been recovered. Twelve were found on Tuesday.

The five bodies discovered and retrieved today were of Air Force personnel. The other twelve belonged to the National Disaster Response Force and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police.

Thirty-eight commandos are now searching for the three remaining bodies. Twenty-six commandos are from the Army's special forces, and they reached the crash site by foot this morning. Twelve elite Garud commandos descended from helicopters down ropes to access the difficult terrain. Weapons were air-dropped today for their protection against wild bears in the area as they conduct their search.

Once all the 20 bodies have been found, they will be pulled up into helicopters with ropes, one by one - a painstaking and delicate process - and will then be flown to Uttarakhand capital Dehradun for post-mortem.

There was no distress call from the chopper before it went down on Tuesday evening.

Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne said the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of the crashed helicopter have been recovered.

It's not clear yet if the crash was caused by bad weather or technical problems, he said.

With 60 helicopters in service in Uttarakhand and about 90,000 people already air-evacuated, this is the largest ever relief and rescue operation for the Air Force.