Taiwan Top Military Officer Killed in Helicopter Crash

Taiwan top military official was killed this morning ina an air force helicopter crash in mountainous terrain outside Taipei.

The Defense Ministry said that in addition to chief of the general staff Gen. Shen Yi-ming,  7 other senior military officials were also killed, while five survived the crash.

The helicopter was flying from Taipei to the nearby  city of Yilan for a New Year's activity when it crashed. The victims included other and the two pilots.

The ministry said that UH-60M Blackhawk with 13 people on board dropped from the radar screen 10 minutes after takeoff from Songshan air force base around 7:50 a.m. It went down in the mountainous, heavily forested Wulai area southeast of the capital.

Shen, 63, had taken over as chief of the general staff in July after serving as commander of Taiwan's air force, which is undergoing a substantial upgrade with the arrival of the most advanced version of the U.S. F-16V fighter.

Alexander Huang, a strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan who had known Shen for a decade, said he had stood out as a pilot and an officer.

"He was very calm and very stable and unlike other army guys he was always smiling, so he got a specific leadership style that also made him a popular leader in the entire military," Huang said.

According to AP, It will likely be months before the cause of the crash is known, but the pilots appeared to have been highly experienced.

"Of course, reasonable people would think in the direction of mechanical failure or maintenance problem, but without proof you can't say anything," Huang said.

A special government committee will look into the cause of the crash, a defense ministry statement said.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party said in a statement on social media that all its public campaign events from now through Saturday would be cancelled.  "The loss of pillars of our country make us feel endless sorrow," the statement read.