Search and rescue unit completes operation / 'It's important to bring them back home'

Members of the military's search and rescue unit yesterday finished collecting the remains of the six Israel Air Force soldiers and the Romanian liaison officer who lost their lives when a Sikorsky CH-53 helicopter crashed in the Carpathian Mountains during a joint military exercise with Romania on Monday.

	IDF search party near cash site of an IAF helicopter in Romania, July 28, 2010.
	Photo by: IDF Spokesman

"It was very important to us to bring them home," an officer who took part in the search said yesterday. "People didn't stop to rest while they were working, even though it came after 36 hours of preparations and flight, during which we didn't have more than two hours of sleep."

The search crew, consisting of more than 50 people, climbed for 90 minutes from the spot in a valley where the helicopters landed. The rescue team arrived at the crash site in three helicopters yesterday.

"We had to climb in a creek with water flowing in it, we took a ladder to cross a waterfall and spread ropes on the way so we wouldn't slip on the rocks," the officer said.

"We combed an area 80 meters long and 30 meters wide," he said. "It was a slope of 60 degrees, so it was impossible to stand in many places and we had to advance tied to the ropes."

Parts strewn over mountain

Parts of the crashed helicopter were strewn all over the mountainside, and in many cases the soldiers had to lift large, heavy pieces of metal to see if the remains of the soldiers were trapped underneath.

Soldiers carried back the metal debris of the crashed helicopter, including parts weighing 40 to 50 kilograms each, which are expected to help investigators figure out what caused the accident.

The IDF teams established two mountainside bases close to the crash site, from which the soldiers' remains and helicopter debris was to be transferred to a central collection point some 2.5 kilometers away.