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HELICOPTER CRASH

Scotland helicopter crash ‘tragic’: Spanish survivor

A Spanish dentist who was inside the Scottish pub at the centre of a helicopter crash on Friday in which at least nine people died has described a horrific scene where rescue was almost impossible.

Scotland helicopter crash 'tragic': Spanish survivor
Emergency services personnel after a helicopter crash at a busy Glasgow pub on Friday. Photo: Andy Buchanan/AFP

The Scotland-based Spanish dentist said he was speechless for several hours after the accident which saw a helicopter crash into Glasgow's Clutha Vaults pub.

"Suddenly the roof came down, there was a lot of noise, a lot of smoke and everyone started to run," Manuel Cueto told Spain's 20 minutos newspaper.

"I was paralyzed and when the smoke started to clear a little, I saw people, I groped my way along, touched a person whose head was bloody, I picked him up and another guy took him outside," he added.  

"It was horrible, seeing what happened there in a question of minutes was something you can't deal with," said the Asturian who was visiting the Clutha Vaults pub for the first time.

Cueto said he helped one another person escape the bar but was unable to rescue more. "It was physically impossible because they were trapped under pieces of wood," he said.

Police on Monday warned that more bodies may still be recovered from the wreckage of the pub.

Rescue efforts were "delicate" and "dangerous" police said.

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SVALBARD

Body recovered after Arctic Norway helicopter crash

Norwegian authorities said Tuesday they had recovered the body of one of the eight people aboard a Russian helicopter that crashed in Norway's Svalbard archipelago last week.

Body recovered after Arctic Norway helicopter crash
Svalbard. Photo: Tore Meek / NTB scanpix

The eight Russians, five crew members and three scientists, are all presumed dead.

“One person was brought to the surface this morning. The body was lying on the ocean floor around 130 metres (430 feet) from the helicopter wreck,” Terje Carlsen, a spokesman for the Svalbard authorities, told AFP.

The search for the seven other victims was continuing on land and at sea, he said.

The helicopter, a Mil Mi-8, went down on Thursday afternoon two or three kilometres from Barentsburg, a Russian mining community in the archipelago.

Norwegian authorities, who dispatched a large search and rescue mission to the scene, announced Sunday that they had found the helicopter on the ocean floor.

Norway, a NATO member, was afforded sovereignty of Svalbard, located around 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole, under a treaty signed in Paris in 1920.

Nationals of all signatory states enjoy “equal liberty of access and entry” to Svalbard and its waters.

As a result Russia operates a coal mine in Barentsburg, home to several hundred Russian and Ukrainian miners, giving Moscow a presence in the geopolitically strategic region.

READ ALSO: Russian helicopter missing in Arctic found on seabed, eight presumed dead: rescuers