Ecuador intel chief, five Americans killed in Kenya helicopter crash

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A rescue official works at the site of a tourist helicopter crash that caused multiple casualties, according to the police, in Samburu County, Kenya, on August 19, 2026. | Photo Credit: Reuters

Ecuador’s intelligence chief and five U.S. citizens died when a tourist helicopter crashed in central Kenya on Wednesday, killing all seven people on board, officials said.

The accident happened Wednesday morning in Samburu County, north of the capital Nairobi, according to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA).

This photo provided by the Kenya Red Cross shows Kenya Red Cross emergency response teams during a multi-agency rescue and recovery operation in response to a helicopter crash that killed tourists near Mt. Ololokwe in Samburu, Kenya, on August 19, 2026. | Photo Credit: AP

Images shared by the Kenya Red Cross on X in the afternoon showed a crash site in flames. It said difficult terrain hampered rescue operations.

“There were seven people on board the helicopter, one pilot and six passengers,” Fredrick Kabunge, director of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Department (AAID), told AFP , confirming that no one had survived.

Contacted by AFP on Wednesday evening (August 19, 2026), Samburu County police chief David Nkoroi said “operations have been suspended until tomorrow because of darkness and the complex nature of the ground and the scene of the crash.”

Ecuador’s Transport Minister Roberto Luque said the Latin American nation’s intelligence chief Michele Sensi-Contugi and his wife were among those killed.

“Today Michele and Stephany left us too soon. Thinking of their family, especially their children and parents,” Luque wrote on X.

Sensi-Contugi, 42, is a former businessman appointed as head of Ecuador’s National Intelligence Center in 2024.

He was a close associate of Ecuador’s right-wing President Daniel Noboa, who has made his country a key US partner in Washington’s renewed combat against drug cartels.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said that five American citizens died in the crash, without providing their identities.

Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, however, announced that one of its senior managers in Florida, Jose Alberto Suarez, had died in the crash.