London/Kabul, Sep 3 (DPA) Fourteen British military personnel were killed Saturday after their aircraft crashed in Afghanistan, the defence ministry in London said.
Among the 14 were 12 members of the Royal Air Force as well as one Royal Marine and a British Army soldier.
The aircraft, which according to media reports was a military helicopter, crashed 12 km west of the southern city of Kandahar. It had been supporting the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ISAF mission in southern Afghanistan.
An earlier ISAF statement said the aircraft crashed having declared a technical problem. An official statement said that "enemy action" had been discounted.
An MoD spokesman described the fatalities as "dreadful and shocking," adding an operation to secure the scene of the crash was ongoing.
The crash represents the greatest single-day loss of British military personnel since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. Until Saturday a total of 22 British soldiers had lost their lives in the country, seven of them since the launch of a major offensive against Taliban militants in August of this year.