Four Italians Killed as an EU Helicopter Crashes in Bosnia

A European Union military helicopter crashed in Bosnia, killing four Italian nationals, according to Al Jazeera. The report, published shortly after midnight GMT on Friday, said EUFOR — the EU's force in the country — had confirmed the loss of a CH-47 Chinook. No further detail on the site, the flight or the people aboard accompanied that confirmation.

The wire leaves the essential questions open. Neither the cause of the crash nor the number of people on board was established in the coverage available on Friday morning, and Al Jazeera did not name the four Italians or say where in Italy they came from. Nothing in the reporting connects the dead to any particular region.

EUFOR is the European Union's military mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It took over from NATO's stabilisation force in 2004 and operates under a United Nations mandate, with headquarters at Camp Butmir outside Sarajevo. Italy has contributed personnel to it, as it did to the NATO-led missions before it, and has been among the more persistent European contributors in the western Balkans since the 1990s.