US service member, 3 contractors killed in surveillance mission plane crash in southern Philippines
The bodies of the four people were retrieved from the wreckage in Ampatuan town, said Ameer Jehad Tim Ambolodto, a safety officer of Maguindanao del Sur. Indo-Pacific Command said the names of the crew were being withheld pending family notifications.
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Windy Beaty, a provincial disaster-mitigation officer, told The Associated Press that she received reports that residents saw smoke coming from the plane and heard an explosion before the aircraft plummeted to the ground less than a kilometer (about half a mile) from a cluster of farmhouses.
Nobody was reported injured on or near the crash site, which was cordoned off by troops, Beaty said.
A water buffalo on the ground was killed as a result of the plane crash, local officials said.
U.S. forces have been deployed in a Philippine military camp in the country's south for decades to help provide advise and training to Filipino forces battling Muslim militants. The region is the homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
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