DUSHANBE, October 27, 2010, Asia-Plus  -- Rescuers from the Committee for Emergency Situations and Civil Defense (CES) are continuing the search operation for the bodies of officers from the special operations unit, Alpha, of the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) that were killed in a helicopter crash in Rasht district.

The CES spokesman Dustmurod Zabirov told Asia-Plus Wednesday afternoon that the bodies of three Alpha officers were found in the Surkhob River on October 26.  “They are Isomuddin Safarov, Olim Siyarov and Miskin Eronshoyev,” said Zabirov.  “The search for the bodies of three other Alpha officers is being continued.”

We will recall that seven National Guard personnel (four crew members and three technical support staff) and 19 servicemen of the SCNS special operations unit, Alpha, were killed and one serviceman of the SCNS special operations unit was seriously injured after the National Guard helicopter crashed in Rasht district in early October.

As it had been reported earlier, the Russian-built MI-8 of the National Guard went down in Kamarob Gorge in Rasht district, some 200 kilometers east of Dushanbe, in the morning of October 6.  According to the preliminary data, the crash was apparently caused by a technical problem.  It was the second reported crash of a military helicopter in Rasht during the ongoing military operation in the area.

Tajik government forces launched a special operation to apprehend former opposition fighters in Rasht on September 22 following an ambush in Kamarob Gorge on September 19, in which at least 28 army conscripts were killed.