Mexican interior minister killed in air crash

Francisco Blake Mora is the second interior minister to be killed in three years in an aviation accident [AFP]

The Mexican interior minister has been killed along with seven other people after the helicopter carrying them crashed near Mexico City.

Francisco Blake Mora, 45, is the second interior minister during Felipe Calderon’s term as president to be killed in an aviation accident.

The government confirmed the death following Friday’s crash but did not say what caused it.

Television images showed the scattered wreckage of the helicopter on a hillside south of the capital.

Mexico is locked in a brutal conflict against drug cartels that has killed 45,000 people in the last five years and Blake Mora was a key member of Calderon’s security team.

On November 4, 2008, Juan Camilo Mourino and several other people died when their small plane crashed next to a major Mexico City boulevard during rush hour.

Investigators concluded that Mourino’s plane had been flying too close to a much bigger jet plane ahead of it, on the flight path to land at Mexico City airport, possibly causing a fatal wave of turbulence.

Blake took office in July 2010, the fourth man to serve as interior minister under Calderon.

The last tweet on Blake Mora’s twitter account was on November 4, when he paid tribute to Mourino.

“Today we remember Juan Camilo Mourino three years after his passing, a human being who worked towards the realisation of a better Mexico,” Blake said in the tweet.