U.N. helicopter crashes off S. Leone

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- A U.N. helicopter carrying seven people has crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Sierra Leone, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

The U.N. said three bodies had been pulled from the sea and that it did not expect to find any survivors.

Margaret Novicki, spokeswoman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the West African country, told Reuters the search was continuing for the other four missing people.

She said the helicopter's crew were Ukrainian, but would not release the nationalities of the other people on board until their families had been informed.

The helicopter, a Ukrainian MI-8, took off from mission headquarters in the capital Freetown at around 7.40 p.m. (1940 GMT) on Wednesday, she said.

"It crashed within about five minutes 500m (yards) north of Man of War Bay, very close to our headquarters," Novicki told Reuters.

A the night-time search was carried out using fast boats belonging to Sierra Leone's British-trained army and the U.S. embassy, with U.N. helicopters lighting up the skies.

The U.N. force in Sierra Leone -- the world body's biggest peacekeeping force with more than 16,000 troops -- uses helicopters extensively, especially to cross the Sierra Leone river which divides Freetown and mission headquarters from the country's main airport at Lungi.

The force is monitoring a ceasefire reached a year ago between government troops and Revolutionary United Front rebels.

Three weeks ago a British army press officer was killed in eastern Sierra Leone when an MI-24 helicopter crashed shortly after takeoff.