Porbandar (Gujarat), Jan 5 :  Three crew members were killed after a helicopter of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) crashed and caught fire at an airport on the outskirts of Gujarat's Porbandar city, police said. The incident took place at 12.10 pm when the ICG's Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH), which was returning from a routine sortie, crashed while trying to land on the runway of the Coast Guard airport, Porbandar Superintendent of Police Bhagirathsinh Jadeja said.The chopper crashed near the runway and caught fire. The blaze was later brought under control with the help of a fire tender, he said. The three crew members onboard were brought out of the chopper and rushed to a hospital in Porbandar in a severely burnt condition, he said. While two of them were declared brought dead, one was alive when brought to the hospital and died later," Kamala Baug police station's inspector Rajesh Kanmiya said.

Their identities were not yet known, he said. The incident comes four months after the ICG's ALH MK-III helicopter crashed into the Arabian Sea off Porbandar on September 2 last year, killing three crew members. The bodies of its pilot and a diver were recovered soon after the incident, while the body of the third crew member was found after more than a month. /Agencies