All 14 people aboard a helicopter which crashed into the Baltic Sea off Estonia this morning are feared dead.
The Estonian rescue service said that the Sikorsky 76 helicopter was on a scheduled flight from Tallinn to Helsinki, Finland, when it went down for unknown reasons,about three miles off the coast near the island of Naissaar. So far there has been no sign of the passengers - six Finns, four Estonians and two Americans - or the two Finnish crew members.
Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip told a news conference in Tallinn there was not enough information to hand about the fate of the 14 on board, "but there is no hope".
Rein Porro, deputy director of Estonia's civil aviation authority called it the worst civil aviation accident in Estonia's history.
"They are believed dead. Typically people cannot survive a crash like this. The helicopter dived very quickly," he said.
Estonian officials said the helicopter had sunk, with the 14 still inside, in 60 of water.
"Helicopter remains have been found," said Finnish Foreign Ministry official Pekka Hyvonen. "For the time being, no people have been found."
Finnish police said forensic experts were being sent to Estonia to help if needed to identify any of those on board the aircraft.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. A storm in the area caused operators to cancel the fast ferries between Tallinn and Helsinki.
Earlier today, fierce winds snapped the mast of a Polish sailboat in the Baltic Sea off the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Nine sailors were rescued and taken to hospital in Poland, while the search for a tenth sailor believed to be in the water was interrupted because of bad weather.
But Copterline, the helicopter 's owner, ruled out poor weather as a factor in the crash. "The helicopter was technically in very good shape. We do not know of any technical or weather-related issues that could have caused problems," Chief Executive Kari Ljungberg told a news conference.