A British air force pilot has died after a Spitfire aircraft crashed on Saturday into a field in eastern England, police and the RAF said.

The fighter aircraft was part of a commemoration of the Battle of Britain at RAF Coningsby, in Lincolnshire, the Guardian newspaper reported.

“Awful news to see the life of a serving RAF pilot cut short in this tragic event. My thoughts are with their family and loved ones,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on social media.

The unidentified pilot was the sole occupant of the aircraft and was declared dead at the scene, Lincolnshire Police said in a statement.

It said nobody else was thought to have been injured as a result of the accident and that investigations were ongoing into the cause.

In a statement, RAF Coningsby said: “It is with great sadness that we must confirm the death of an RAF pilot in a tragic accident near RAF Coningsby today.

“The pilot’s family have been informed and we ask that their privacy is respected at this difficult time.”

Melbourne:

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Monday he would be “happy to reopen” the search for flight MH370 if “compelling” evidence emerged, opening the door to a renewed hunt a decade after the plane disappeared.
“If there is compelling evidence that it needs to be reopened, we will certainly be happy to reopen it,” he said when asked about the matter during a visit to Melbourne.

His comments came as the families marked 10 years since the plane vanished in the Indian Ocean with 239 people aboard.

“I don’t think it’s a technical issue. It’s an issue affecting the lives of people and whatever needs to be done must be done,” he said.

Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a Boeing 777 aircraft, disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has never been found and the operation was suspended in January 2017.

About 500 relatives and their supporters gathered Sunday at a shopping centre near the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur for a “remembrance day”, with many visibly overcome with grief.

Some of the relatives came from China, where almost two-thirds of the passengers of the doomed plane were from.

“The last 10 years have been a nonstop emotional rollercoaster for me,” Grace Nathan, a 36-year-old Malaysian lawyer whose mother, Anne Daisy, 56, was on the flight, told AFP.

Speaking to the crowd, she called on the Malaysian government to conduct a new search.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke told reporters that “as far Malaysia is concerned, it is committed to finding the plane… cost is not the issue”.

He told relatives at the gathering that he would meet with officials from Texas-based marine exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which conducted a previous unsuccessful search, to discuss a new operation.

“We are now awaiting for them to provide suitable dates and I hope to meet them soon,” he said.

An earlier Australia-led search that covered 120,000 square kilometres (46,000 square miles) in the Indian Ocean found hardly any trace of the plane, with only some pieces of debris picked up.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Police personnel push equipment on trolleys towards a Northern Territory Police on the tarmac of the Darwin International Airport in Darwin on August 28, 2023, as investigations continue after three US Marines died on August 27 when an Osprey aircraft crashed on Melville Island, located north of Darwin.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Eight U.S. Marines remained in a hospital in the Australian north coast city of Darwin on August 28 after they were injured in a fiery crash of a tiltrotor aircraft that killed three of their colleagues on an island.

All 20 survivors were flown from Melville Island 80 kilometres (50 miles) south to Darwin within hours of the Marine V-22 Osprey crashing at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday during a multinational training exercise, Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles said.

All were taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital, and 12 had been discharged by Monday, she said.

The first five Marines to arrive at the city’s main hospital were critically injured and one underwent emergency surgery.

Ms. Fyles said she would not detail the conditions of eight who remained in the hospital out of respect for them and their families.

“It’s… a credit to everyone involved that we were able to get 20 patients from an extremely remote location on an island into our tertiary hospital within a matter of hours,” Ms. Fyles told reporters.

The Osprey that crashed was one of two that flew from Darwin to Melville on Sunday as part of Exercise Predators Run, which involves the militaries of the United States, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor.

All 23 Marines aboard the lost aircraft were temporarily based in Darwin as part of the Marine Corps’ annual troop rotation.

Around 150 U.S. Marines are currently based in Darwin and up to 2,500 rotate through the city every year. They are part of a realignment of U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific that is broadly meant to face an increasingly assertive China.

The bodies of the three Marines remained at the crash site, where an exclusion zone would be maintained, Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said.

The cause of the crash had yet to be explained and investigators would remain at the site for at least 10 days, Mr. Murphy said.

The Osprey, a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter but during flight can tilt its propellers forward and cruise much faster like an airplane, crashed into tropical forest and burst into flame.

Before Sunday, there had been five fatal crashes of Marine Ospreys since 2012, causing a total of 16 deaths.

The latest was in June 2022, when five Marines died in a fiery crash in a remote part of California east of San Diego. A crash investigation report last month found that the tragedy was caused by a mechanical failure related to a clutch.

There had been 16 similar clutch problems with the Marine Ospreys in flight since 2012, the report found. But no problems have arisen since February when the Marine Corps began replacing a piece of equipment on the aircraft, the report said.

Emergency responders were surprised the death toll from Sunday’s crash was not higher.

“For a chopper that crashes and catches fire, to have 20 Marines that are surviving, I think that’s an incredible outcome,” Mr. Murphy said.

Defence Minister Richard Marles was also grateful that the toll was not worse.

“It’s remarkable that in many ways, so many have survived,” Mr. Marles told Nine News television. “This remains a very tragic incident and the loss of those lives are keenly felt,” Mr. Marles added.

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin paid tribute to dead Marines.

“These Marines served our country with courage and pride, and my thoughts and prayers are with their families today, with the other troops who were injured in the crash, and with the entire USMC family,” Mr. Austin tweeted.

The U.S. Embassy in Australia issued a statement offering condolences to the families and friends of the dead Marines and thanking Australian responders for their help.