Fourteen die in south Sudan plane crash-aid workers

NAIROBI, May 7 (Reuters) – Fourteen people, including 12 children, died in an aid plane crash in southern Sudan, aviation officials and aid workers in neighbouring Kenya said on Friday.

The Czech-designed Let-410 twin-engined turboprop crashed on takeoff from Jiech in Western Upper Nile on Thursday, the aid workers said, adding the dead included the pilot and an education coordinator.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash.

The co-pilot and four passengers injured in the incident were due to be flown to Kenya for treatment later on Friday. The Let-410, a 1970s-era light commuter plane, has a payload capacity of 19 passengers, according to aviation websites.

Southern Sudan, an area more than twice the size of France, has almost no roads and aid agencies are obliged to use aircraft to ferry supplies and personnel.

Sudan’s Khartoum-based government and southern rebels are holding talks to end one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts in which more than two million people have died since southern rebels began fighting for greater autonomy in 1983.

Often depicted as a war pitting the Muslim north against the Christian south, the conflict is complicated by disputes over oil, ethnicity, religion and ideology.