Two U.S. Army he­li­copters col­lid­ed and crashed Thurs­day in Alas­ka while re­turn­ing from a train­ing flight, killing three sol­diers and in­jur­ing a fourth.

Two of the sol­diers died at the scene of the crash near Healy, Alas­ka, and a third died on the way to a hos­pi­tal in Fair­banks. A fourth sol­dier was be­ing treat­ed at a hos­pi­tal for in­juries, the Army said in a state­ment.

The names of those killed were be­ing with­held un­til rel­a­tives could be no­ti­fied, the Army said.

Each AH-64 Apache he­li­copter was car­ry­ing two peo­ple at the time of the crash, John Pen­nell, a spokesper­son for the U.S. Army Alas­ka, said ear­li­er Thurs­day.

The he­li­copters were from the 1st At­tack Bat­tal­ion, 25th Avi­a­tion Reg­i­ment at Fort Wain­wright, based near Fair­banks.

“This is an in­cred­i­ble loss for these sol­diers’ fam­i­lies, their fel­low sol­diers, and for the di­vi­sion,” Maj. Gen. Bri­an Ei­fler, com­mand­ing gen­er­al of the 11th Air­borne Di­vi­sion, said in the Army state­ment. “Our hearts and prayers go out to their fam­i­lies, friends and loved ones, and we are mak­ing the full re­sources of the Army avail­able to sup­port them.”

The Army said the cause of the crash was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion and more de­tails would be re­leased when they be­come avail­able.

The crash is the sec­ond ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing mil­i­tary he­li­copters in Alas­ka this year.

In Feb­ru­ary, two sol­diers were in­jured when an Apache he­li­copter rolled af­ter tak­ing off from Tal­keet­na. The air­craft was one of four trav­el­ing to Joint Base El­men­dorf-Richard­son in An­chor­age from Fort Wain­wright.

In March, nine sol­diers were killed when two U.S. Army Black Hawk med­ical evac­u­a­tion he­li­copters crashed dur­ing a rou­tine night­time train­ing ex­er­cise about 30 miles (48 kilo­me­ters) north­east of Fort Camp­bell, Ken­tucky.

Healy is lo­cat­ed about 10 miles (16.09 kilo­me­ters) north of De­nali Na­tion­al Park and Pre­serve, or about 250 miles (402 kilo­me­ters) north of An­chor­age.

Healy is a com­mu­ni­ty of about 1,000 peo­ple lo­cat­ed on the Parks High­way in Alas­ka’s in­te­ri­or re­gion. It is a pop­u­lar place for peo­ple to spend the night while vis­it­ing the near­by park, which is home to De­nali, the con­ti­nent’s tallest moun­tain.

Healy is al­so fa­mous for be­ing the town clos­est to the for­mer bus that had been aban­doned in the back­coun­try and was pop­u­lar­ized by the book “In­to the Wild” and the movie of the same name. The bus was re­moved and tak­en to Fair­banks in 2020.

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JOINT BASE EL­MEN­DORF-RICHARD­SON, Alas­ka (AP)