from news24.com
14 die in Sudan plane crash
07/05/2004 22:29 - (SA)
Nairobi, Kenya - A small plane carrying students on a field trip crashed in southern Sudan, killing 12 children, a pilot and an adult chaperone, an aid worker said on Friday.
The Czech-built LET-410 crashed shortly after take-off Thursday on a trip between two towns in the Upper Nile province, part of rebel-held southern Sudan, said Dan Eiff, the Sudan co-ordinator for Norwegian People's Aid.
"It was in the air and then it just collapsed, I think the engine failed. It crashed near the village," said Eiff, who witnessed the crash near Nur, 1 600km south of Khartoum.
One of the pilots, from New Zealand, was killed, while the other survived. Four Sudanese school children also survived and all were taken to a hospital for treatment, Eiff said.
The plane belonged to a charter company and regularly operated in Sudan, other aid workers said.
The war in Sudan erupted in 1983 when rebels from the predominantly animist and Christian south took up arms against the mainly Muslim and Arab north. The rebels say they are fighting for greater equality for the south and for southerners to have the right to choose whether to remain part of Sudan.
While peace talks are underway in neighbouring Kenya, more than a dozen aid agencies work in southern Sudan offering relief to the more than one million people displaced by the fighting. Special efforts are made to educate school children, including trips to meet other students or to attend special educational presentations, such as the one the students were to attend.