Five U.S. service members were killed when a helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan, a U.S. official said early Tuesday.

The chopper went down Monday in the Daman district of southern Kandahar during a rain storm, said Jawid Faisal, a government spokesman for the province.

There was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the incident, according to a statement by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The U.S. official, who did not want to be identified, did not offer additional information about the victims.

It was the first coalition helicopter crash with fatalities since September, when two separate crashes killed a total of 11 coalition service members.

One occurred in early September, killing two; the other in the third week, killing seven service members and injuring two more.

There were no reports of enemy fire in either of those incidents.

There have been 18 coalition deaths in 2013, including two U.S. service members who were killed Monday by an assailant wearing an Afghan National Security Forces uniform.

The deaths come just after newly installed U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Afghanistan on his first overseas trip since his confirmation and as coalition members draw down their forces in the nation where war has been ongoing since 2001.

In August 2011, a helicopter went down killing at least 30 U.S. service members, the single deadliest loss for U.S. troops in the Afghan war. Insurgents shot down the CH-47 Chinook, which was carrying 25 U.S. special operations forces.

Some the those who died belonged to the same covert unit that conducted the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, though they were not the same men, a military official said at the time.

New York City's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, stepped out of a helicopter midday Thursday in St. Camillus' parking lot, ironically an Occupy Sandy relief distribution hub in the Rockaways, Queens. The visit had been kept under wraps and not listed on his official schedule.

Bloomberg and a small party accompanying him were whisked off in black cars. He missed a greeting from community members in an area still reeling from Hurricane Sandy, with quickly-lettered signs: "Rockaways in Health Crisis," "We Need Safer Housing."

Bloomberg made his way to the still-shuttered offices of The Wave, the Rockaways weekly newspaper. As word spread about the stealth visit, a crowd gathered outside hoping to explain those signs to the mayor: a month after Sandy hit, swamping homes with seawater, many residents -- homeowners and tenants -- are still living without electricity, without heat, without working appliances, with black mold taking hold of walls and other surfaces. Temporary housing is desperately needed, absentee landlords must fix their properties.

The mayor emerged behind a row of police, thanked the group, and was quickly driven away -- avoiding a repeat of his November 4th visit when residents lambasted him for ignoring them.

[Via OccupyWallSt.Org]