2 pilots of peacekeeping plane killed in crash in Sudan’s Darfur

Dec 25, 200 (KHARTOUM) — An airplane used by African Union peace monitors crashed in the conflict-torn Darfur region of Sudan,killing the two pilots – a Ukrainian and a Moldovan – the union said Sunday.

Rwandan AU troops board a helicopter .

The plane, a Russian-made Antonov 28, was taking off from thetown of Zalinge, in West Darfur state, and heading for the region’smain town El-Fasher when it crashed Saturday evening, the African Union said in a statement.

Investigators were still trying to determine the cause of thecrash, the first of its kind since African Union peacekeepers firstdeployed in 2004, the union said.

The official Sudan news agency quoted an unnamed African Union official blaming the crash on a”technical breakdown” that took place shortly after takeoff.

The plane’s two pilots, a Ukrainian and a Moldovan, were killed.There was no one else on the plane, which had been used totransport AU personnel around Darfur.

Around 7,000 AU troops are acting as peacekeepers in the vastregion of western Sudan, where at least 180,000 people have diedand 2 million have been displaced during two years of fighting,which began when rebels took up arms against what they saw as yearsof state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin.

The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which the ethnic Arab militia, known as Janjaweed,committed wide-scale abuses against ethnic Africans.

(AP/ST)