Four Italians Die as EU Force Helicopter Crashes in Bosnia

The European Union's military force in Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed on Friday that one of its CH-47 Chinook helicopters had crashed, killing four people, all of them Italian nationals, Al Jazeera reported. The force, known as EUFOR, gave no immediate account of what brought the aircraft down. The report did not name the dead, nor say where in the country the helicopter came down.

EUFOR is the EU's military operation in Bosnia, deployed since 2004, when it took over from the NATO-led force that had policed the country after the 1992-95 war. Its mandate comes from the United Nations Security Council, and its work now combines a residual military presence with training and advisory support for the Bosnian armed forces. A fatal crash puts that air operation under a scrutiny that routine rotations never attract.

Italy has been among the mission's contributing nations since it began, and Italian personnel have served in the country through both the NATO and the EU eras. Losing four nationals in a single accident gives the incident a weight in Rome that a line in a mission communiqué would not. It also places an Italian file in the hands of a headquarters that answers to Brussels as much as to any national capital.