U.N. says 17 bodies recovered at Garang crash site

KHARTOUM, Aug 10 (Reuters) – The United Nations said on Wednesday 17 bodies had been recovered from the site of a helicopter crash that killed southern Sudanese leader John Garang, although Uganda has said only 14 were on board its chopper.

Rebecca Nyandeng (R), the widow of John Garang, touches her late husband’s coffin covered with the Southern Sudan flag during a religious ceremony in New Site village in Southern Sudan August 2, 2005. (Reuters).

Garang died when the Ugandan presidential helicopter he was travelling in went down in bad weather on July 30, three weeks after he was made Sudan’s first vice president under a peace deal ending a 21-year north-south civil war.

The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear, although a member of the southern Sudanese leadership council had earlier also said 17 bodies had been recovered.

“The figures that we have, and these are the last figures I saw, we are talking about 17,” U.N. spokeswoman Radhia Achouri told reporters in Khartoum.

Khartoum has previously said six of Garang’s companions and a crew of seven also died in the crash near the Sudan-Uganda border.

A joint commission between the government and Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) was formed this week to investigate the causes of the crash and officials have said they welcome any input from the U.N. or other international experts.

The commission, headed by SPLM official and former Vice President Abel Alier, is to offer a preliminary report within four weeks of starting work.

Achouri said a U.N. team was deployed near the crash site ready to assist, but she added the final composition of the investigation team had not yet been confirmed.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said he could not rule out the possibility that the crash was not an accident.

Both the Sudanese government and SPLM officials have played down any possibility of foul play.

News of Garang’s death sparked the worst riots in the Sudanese capital for decades, killing 111 people and injuring more than 300. The violence has polarised Khartoum’s large southern and northern communities.

Garang signed a peace deal in January to end Africa’s longest civil war in Sudan’s south, and became first vice president on July 9.

The peace deal envisages a new coalition government, wealth and power sharing, and a southern referendum on secession from the north within six years.