ABC's Ike Ejiochi reports the latest on the deadly US Marines chopper crash in Australia.
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00:00 This morning, an urgent investigation is underway into what caused a United States Marine Corps
00:05 aircraft with 23 Marines on board to crash on a North Australian island Sunday morning,
00:12 killing at least three Marines and critically injuring at least five others during a training
00:17 exercise.
00:18 Our focus as a government and as the Department of Defense is very much on incident response
00:26 and on making sure that every support and assistance is given at this time.
00:33 President Biden responding in a statement writing Jill and I send our deepest condolences
00:38 to the families of the Marines who lost their lives in this deadly crash.
00:43 We are praying for those who also suffered injuries.
00:45 It was a multinational training exercise, but only American Marines were involved in
00:50 the crash.
00:51 Australian Emergency Services assisting with the recovery efforts.
00:55 Paramedics seen loading injured U.S. Marines into the back of ambulances evacuating the
01:00 injured from the island to a hospital on the mainland city of Darwin, about 50 miles away.
01:06 A number of investigations will be triggered with an accident of this kind.
01:10 I mean, the Osprey is a very unique aircraft.
01:13 The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but during
01:18 flight can rotate its propellers forward and cruise much faster like an airplane.
01:23 But the aircraft has a patchy track record.
01:26 16 people have died in five other crashes involving the military aircraft since 2012,
01:32 including two in this fiery crash in Hawaii in 2015.
01:37 Now according to that report, there have been 16 similar clutch problems with the Marine
01:42 Ospreys in flight since 2012, but no problems have been found since this February when the
01:47 Marine Corps began replacing a piece of equipment on the aircraft.
01:51 Aikichachi, ABC News, Washington.