Manila, the Philippines-a member of the American service and three defense contractors were killed on Thursday when an airplane hired by the US army crashed into a rice field in southern Philippines, said Indo-Pacific Command of the United States .
The plane was carrying out a routine mission “providing intelligence, surveillance and recognition support at the request of our Filipino allies,” the command said in a statement. He said the cause of the accident was under investigation.
The Civil Aviation of the Philippines also confirmed the accident of a light plane in the province of Maguindanao del Sur. He did not immediately provide other details.
The bodies of the four people were recovered from the remains in the city of Ampatuan, said Amer Jehad Tim Ambolodto, a South Maguindanao Security officer. The Indo-Pacific command said that crew names were being held pending family notifications.
Windy Beaty, a provincial disaster mitigation officer, told Associated Press that he received reports that the residents saw smoke from the plane and listened to an explosion before the plane collapsed to the ground approximately half a mile of a group of farm .
No one was reported injured in or near the scene of the accident, which was cordoned off by the troops, Beaty said.
A water buffalo on the ground was killed as a result of the plane crash, local authorities said.
The US forces have been deployed in a Filipino military camp in the south of the country to help provide advice and training to the Philippine Forces fighting Muslim militants. The region is the homeland of minority Muslims in the Catholic nation in a large part Roman.
