by Wang Qibing, Nguon Sovan
PHNOM PENH, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of Cambodian mourners, mostly military personnel, on Tuesday expressed deep sympathy over the deaths of two air force generals and two pilots in a military helicopter crash on Monday.
Mourners lined up to light incense sticks and candles to pray for the dead military officers, whose bodies were displayed at a funeral held at the Phnom Penh Military Airbase.
"I am deeply shocked and saddened to learn of the tragedy," a military officer Vern Mony said, adding that the two deceased generals were his bosses and the dead pilots were his colleagues.
"They were good persons and devoted themselves to serving the nation," he said.
Another sympathizer said she was very sad to hear the chopper accident and shared her deepest sympathy with bereaved families.
"It was an accident; no one knew it in advance," said a 52- year-old mourner You Naysean while attending the funeral. "What we can do is expressing our condolences to the bereaved families."
A Chinese-built Z-9 military helicopter, carrying five military officers, crashed into a water-filled quarry on the outskirts of Phnom Penh City on Monday morning during a training mission, Yin Sokha, deputy commander of the Cambodian Air Force, said.
"Four military officers, including two generals, were killed and one was seriously injured in the crash," he said.
The two deceased generals were Major General Uk Ponnaha, commander of military helicopter unit and Brigadier General Ieng Channarith, deputy chief of the Cambodian Air Force's technical unit.
Keo Bophavary, the wife of late Gen. Ieng Channarith, said she was almost unconscious to learn of her husband's death.
"He had fought in the past wars and never got wounded, but now he was killed in chopper crash," she said and sobbed at the funeral.
"He was the breadwinner in the family, and now, he'd gone. What should we depend on?" said the widow with three daughters.
Defense Minister Tea Banh said Monday that the two deceased generals were veteran trainers and helicopter experts.
"The tragedy was a great loss of human resources in our military helicopter unit," he said.
He said the cause of the accident was still under investigation, but, according to eyewitnesses, the helicopter crashed into the flooded quarry after its fan hit the bank of the quarry.
A 300-strong rescue team took up to eight hours on Monday to retrieve the wreck of the helicopter and to recover the four bodies from the quarry, which was as deep as 20 meters.
It was the second chopper crash tragedy in Cambodia in the last six years. In 2008, the country's national police chief Hok Lundy was killed in a helicopter crash along with the then deputy army commander and two pilots when their chopper went down in heavy rain.
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