|
Sudanese Generals Among Killed In Plane Crash
KHARTOUM, April 4 (News Agencies) - A Sudanese military plane crashed in war-torn southern Sudan on Wednesday, killing 15 people, including the deputy defense minister and 11 generals, state television reported.
The television said the aircraft crashed when it veered off the runway at the airport of Adaryel, a town southeast of Malakal, the capital of Upper Nile state more than 700 kilometers (420 miles) south of Khartoum.
The television did not make it clear whether the plane crashed on landing or takeoff but said its high-ranking passengers were on a mission to inspect government troops based in the oil-rich and war-torn region.
It did not say whether the event was the result of an accident or an attack.
Much of southern Sudan has suffered from an 18-year civil war between government forces and the rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation army (SPLA), but there have been no reports of recent fighting around Adaryel.
Among the dead were the deputy defense minister, Colonel Ibrahim Shams Eddin, as well as 11 generals, another colonel and a lieutenant colonel, according to an armed forces statement read on television and radio.
Two of the generals were from the south of the country, the statement said.
Eddin was also a member of the Revolutionary Council that led the 1989 military coup that brought General Omar al-Beshir to power.
Fifty people, including six officers, died when a military plane crashed in June 1999, as a result of an unspecified technical problem in the eastern state of Kassala, near Ethiopia, according to the authorities.
Whole areas of the south and east have witnessed the war pitting the SPLA, representing the mainly Christian and animist south, against successive Arab and Muslim governments in the north.
Since 1995, northern opposition groups have joined the southern rebels in battling Khartoum.
The stakes have increased since Sudan started exporting oil from the south in September 1999. U.S. lawmakers, human rights groups and others, have accused Khartoum of using the revenues to prosecute the war.
Khartoum has come under frequent criticism from Washington, which has charged it with launching air strikes on civilian targets and disrupting the distribution of humanitarian goods in the impoverished and drought-plagued south.
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Khartoum appeared to have eased its air strikes on civilians.
But Powell, who has undertaken a review toward U.S. policy on Sudan and is being urged by lawmakers to appoint a special envoy to deal with the country and its government, said he was continuing to assess the situation there.
Powell also noted that Arab and African-sponsored peace efforts to date had gone nowhere.
|
