A paratrooper was injured during an exercise by the Dutch army in Belgium on Thursday. The victim was taken to hospital with minor injuries, the Belgian Public Prosecution Service in Leuven confirmed. There is nothing to indicate malicious intent.
The accident happened at Schaffen airport near Diest, about half an hour’s drive from Hasselt. This airfield is still used for training by both the Belgian and Dutch armed forces.
Paratroopers from the Dutch army were conducting a jumping exercise around noon on Thursday. Two soldiers became entangled with their parachutes and crashed. One of them was injured and taken to hospital with minor injuries. The other was virtually unharmed.
The accident must be properly evaluated, says the Union for Civilian and Military Defense Personnel. “When skydiving there is always the risk of accidents happening and this must be prevented as much as possible,” said union president Jean Debie. “A proper evaluation must take place to see what happened and to see whether procedures need to be adjusted.” According to him, these types of evaluations happen all the time at Defense.
Ended up outside the drop zone
The Belgian newspaper The last news (HLN) was the first to report the news of the accident. The message mentioned two injured people, one of whom was said to be seriously injured. According to the Public Prosecution Service in Leuven, there is one slightly injured person, a man born in 2002.
“There is always a small chance that a jump will go wrong,” says Adjutant Major Ponet of the Belgian Armed Forces. “And that has now happened. But everyone did the right thing. It is now up to our Dutch colleagues to investigate what exactly went wrong.”
In recent months, one soldier has been killed and several injured in accidents during exercises abroad. Last week there was also an incident at the airport in Schaffen. A Dutch paratrooper ended up outside the drop zone due to an unknown cause. It is not clear whether there is a connection, but the Dutch armed forces are jumping to the conclusion HLN recently with a new type of parachute.
Extra alert
Belgian justice is extra alert to accidents involving a parachute after a high-profile lawsuit in 2009, which became known as the ‘parachute murder’. Then a parachute was deliberately disabled.
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Tags: Young Dutch soldier injured parachute jump Belgium chance wrong Domestic
