A devastating aviation accident has claimed the lives of all six people on board a helicopter that went down in Kenya’s central Samburu County, at the iconic Mount Ololokwe located within a protected wildlife reserve, national air accident investigators confirmed in a statement to the BBC.
Officials from the Kenya Aircraft Accident Investigation Department have announced that formal identification of the crash victims is still ongoing, though local media reports have indicated that the aircraft was carrying a group of tourists when the incident occurred.
According to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA), the crash occurred at approximately 9:13 a.m. local time, which corresponds to 6:13 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. The helicopter was operating a scenic sightseeing flight, departing from a wildlife conservancy in Losaiba and en route to Ewaso Nyiro, a major river that runs alongside multiple of Kenya’s famous national game reserves.
Visual evidence shared across social media platforms shows thick plumes of smoke rising from the crash site on the slopes of Mount Ololokwe. First responders from the Kenya Red Cross told the BBC that rough terrain has blocked ground access to the accident zone as of initial reports, so unmanned aerial drones are currently being deployed to map the site and gather preliminary on-the-ground information.
KCAA confirmed that the aircraft involved in the accident is a Eurocopter EC130 B4, and that the agency is currently leading coordination of emergency response and recovery operations. The regulatory body added that Kenya’s Ministry of Transport alongside the Aircraft Accident Investigation Department will take charge of the full probe into what caused the crash, to determine the full circumstances surrounding the incident.
This latest crash adds to a troubling pattern of aviation accidents in Kenya, where helicopter incidents have occurred with alarming frequency in recent years. Just this past February, a crash in Nandi County, located in the Rift Valley region, left six people dead, including a sitting Kenyan member of parliament. In 2024, Kenya’s top military leader General Francis Omondi Ogolla was killed when an army helicopter carrying 11 passengers went down in western Kenya, with only two people on board surviving the impact. As far back as June 2021, at least 10 Kenyan soldiers lost their lives when their helicopter crashed during landing operations near the capital city of Nairobi.