2 pilots killed in Swiss military helicopter crash in the Alps

A Swiss Super Puma helicopter crashed Wednesday in the Alps, killing the two pilots and injuring a flight assistant, the head of Switzerland's air force said.

The accident happened around midday in the remote Gotthard Pass in the Tessin region near a hospice that stands at an altitude of 2,100 metres (6,900 feet).

The Blick newspaper published a photo it said was sent in by a reader showing smoke billowing from flaming wreckage.

The incident was the latest in a series of Swiss military crashes. A Swiss Air Force F/A 18 slammed into a mountainside this month moments after an air traffic controller assigned the pilot too low an altitude at which to fly. The pilot died.

That crash was the third by an F/A 18 in the past three years. A Swiss F-5E air demonstration fighter jet collided with another plane and crashed into a pond in the northern Netherlands ahead of an air show in June.

The European Aviation Safety Authority grounded some Super Puma helicopters in June following the discovery of metal fatigue in the gearbox of an H225 model that fatally crashed in Norway in late April.