At least 27 Indian pilgrims, all from Maharashtra, who arrived in Nepal for a 10-day tour were killed and 16 others injured after their bus veered off the highway and fell into a fast-flowing river in central Nepal on Friday.
"The IAF played a vital role in five of the seven phases of the general elections, flying over 1,000 hours in over 1,750 sorties," it said.
IAF pilots and crew dodged low hanging clouds, mist covered hills, steep valleys and landed on broken landing grounds to rescue civilians in Wayanad. In one mission, they had to descend vertically to get close to the survivors. IAF flew over 80 missions, saving lives and giving hope. This is how they did it.
The Centre will provide MI-17 cargo chopper to Uttarakhand to ferry heavy equipment to calamity-hit high altitude areas to expedite reconstruction work in the hill state.
The defence ministry said the proposals approved by the DAC included one on procurement of 7.62x51 mm light machine gun and another on acquisition of weapons MH-60R helicopters of the Indian Navy.
Assam's flood situation remained critical on Tuesday with over 6.71 lakh people affected in 20 districts in the second wave of flooding this year, as the Indian Air Force (IAF) rescued 13 stranded fishermen from the severely-hit Dibrugarh district, an official said.
The Indian Air Force on September 22 flew fighter jets as part of rehearsals for the air show to be held at Air Force Station Jammu.
Efforts have also intensified to extinguish the raging forest fires in the state, especially in the worst-affected areas of Nainital, Haldwani and Ramnagar forest divisions, forest officials here said on Sunday.
Operation Meghdoot was launched on April 13, 1984, when the Indian Army and IAF advanced to the Siachen Glacier to secure the heights dominating the northern Ladakh region
Three people were killed after the MiG-21 fighter aircraft crashed into a house in Hanumangarh in Rajasthan shortly after it took off for a routine training sortie from the Air Force Station at Suratgarh.
The exercise was aimed at validating joint plans for strategic airlift of specialised forces employing IAF's fixed and rotary wing platforms by landing and dropping in designated areas for undertaking kinetic actions, they said.
The operations are being carried out in coordination with the railway authorities on the ground, he said.
For India, it is a symbol of will and a successful feat of arms.
On day three after a flash flood wreaked havoc in Sikkim's Teesta basin, the number of bodies recovered from the river and mud embankments downstream rose to 22, including seven army men.
The chopper took off at 11.48 am from the Sulur Air Base and was reported to be missing at around 12.22 pm, sources informed.
The flash flood affected 25,065 people in four districts - Mangan, Gangtok, Pakyong and Namchi, the report said.
Here is a timeline of what happened to the Indian Air Force helicopter carrying Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat and others that crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday:
The marching contingents of the Army, the Navy and the IAF will participate in the prestigious parade along with their French counterparts.
The mesmerizing march included elite marching contingents, missiles, warplanes, surveillance gadgets and lethal weapon systems, with French President Emmanuel Macron gracing the occasion as the chief guest.
'With butterflies in our stomachs, but confident of our mission, we took off for Jaffna on the morning of 24 July 1987.' IAF Veteran Air Commodore Nitin Sathe recalls a conversation with Air Vice Marshal Harpal Singh Ahluwalia (retd), then a wing commander and mission leader for the clandestine operation.
'Since the rotors of a helicopter rotate at very high RPMs, if they hit an obstacle -- for example a tree, wire or pole, the result is catastrophic.'
The flypast will begin with "Dhwaj" formation with four Mi-17 aircraft, followed by "Rudra" and "Rahat" formations with 4 and 5 Advanced Light Helicopters, respectively.
Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari, chief of the air staff, flew a sortie in an IAF Rafale fighter while FASF Chief General Stephane Mille flew in an IAF Su-30MKI fighter.
Every part of the equipment salvaged from the remanants of the Mi-17V5 helicopter will be carefully examined to find out what went wrong in the final moments of the flight from the Sulur air base in Coimbatore to the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington near Coonoor where General Rawat was headed.
Wing Commander Prithvi Singh Chauhan was the pilot of the crashed Indian Air Force (IAF) Mi-17V5 helicopter, carrying Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat and 13 others, informed sources.
Four Army personnel were killed and one was reported missing after the twin-engine weapon system integrated (WSI) version of the indigenously-built helicopter went down at Migging village in Upper Siang district of the border state at 10.43 am on Friday.
State police, however, denied there was any breach of security but said one Congress worker has been apprehended in this connection, while three other party workers were arrested for trying to enter the airport with black balloons.
In what could be a lesson learnt from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war where anti-tank missiles have played a big role, the Indian Air Force is arming its Russian-origin helicopters with the Israeli 'Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) ATGMs' which can hit ground targets from distances up to 30 km.
Another woman from Malda district said that her son was killed in the accident.
Official sources said all the injured people on board the Mi-17V5 helicopter have been evacuated from the spot of the accident.
The 15 choppers that met with accidents included four Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH), four Cheetah, two ALH (weapon system integrated) versions, three Mi-17V5, an Mi-17 and a Chetak.
Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari, chief of the air staff, arrived at the site of the chopper crash
Videos from the scene, shot by locals in Morena, showed debris of the aircraft on the ground.
'The accident was a result of entry into clouds due to unexpected change in weather conditions in the valley. This led to spatial disorientation of the pilot resulting in Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT),' it stated.
Life in the north-eastern state of Manipur continued to limp back to normal as curfew was relaxed in 11 districts, including Imphal West, Bishnupur, Churachandpur and Jiribam, for six hours from 5 am, as no fresh incident of violence was reported, officials said on Wednesday.
Presently, the eight cheetahs at Kuno are killing a prey every three-four days and are in good health, officials said.
'I decided to send a bat and a ball which was smaller in size so that it shouldn't get stuck in the pipe. And with that, they had a little good time.'
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday called on President Ram Nath Kovind and briefed him about the chopper crash near Coonoor that killed Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika and 11 armed forces personnel.
22 of the people trapped in mid-air in a row of ropeway cable cars for around 24 hours following the accident were rescued on Monday while one person has died, officials said.
All the mangled remains of the helicopter, which crashed at Nanjapachatram near Coonoor in the Nilgiris district killing 14 including the country's first chief of defence staff Bipin Rawat have been collected from the site.
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