A small plane contracted by the Pentagon crashed in the southern Philippines on Thursday, with all four members on board, including members of the US military.
The Beechcraft King Air 300 plane crashed in Ampatuan city in Maginda Nao del Sur province, Philippine authorities said Friday. I was on my way from Cebu to Cotabato, the capital of Mindanao's Muslim autonomous region.
The incident occurred during “a regular mission to support security cooperation efforts in the US and the Philippines,” the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement Friday.
“The aircraft provided information, surveillance and reconnaissance assistance at the request of our Philippine allies,” the statement said. The names of those killed were withheld until they could notify their families.
The Philippines is the oldest treaty ally of the United States in Asia. The US military has been deployed for many years at military camps in Mindanao to help train Filipino soldiers to fight Muslim separatist militants. In 2017, US Special Forces supported the Philippine forces as they fought Islamic State-related extremists in cities in southern Malawi.
