Nine members of a multinational peacekeeping force, eight French nationals and a Canadian, were killed on Sunday when their plane crashed during an emergency landing in Egypt's Sinai peninsula. According to Egyptian security sources on the crash site, the light aircraft suffered a technical failure and tried to perform an emergency landing on a road near the town of Nakhl, a remote area in the central Sinai mountains. All the dead belonged to a quarter-century-old peacekeeping mission, the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), which suffered its greatest loss with the accident. "The nine military personnel on board, eight French and one Canadian, all died in this tragic accident," the French defence ministry said, confirming an earlier Egyptian toll.
One of the plane's wings smashed into a truck carrying large containers, sending the aircraft crashing into a hill, the sources said, quoting the truck driver, who survived the accident. "Yes, unfortunately we have had reports of a plane crash. It was a French aircraft carrying eight French crew members. There was one other officer on board whose identity we are still trying to get," the MFO director general's representative, Normand St. Pierre, said. "It was a training mission and we lost touch with the plane shortly after takeoff," he said. The plane was heading south from the northern Sinai airport of Al-Gurah, where the MFO has one of its two bases in the peninsula. "The two pilots radioed in to report a technical failure and warn that they would attempt an emergency landing, after which we lost contact with them," a source at Al-Gurah airport said.
Witnesses in the area said that the plane smashed into a truck as it was attempting its emergency landing before crashing into the side of a mountain. Egyptian aviation official Ehab Mohieddin told AFP that a preliminary enquiry indicated that "the accident may have been due to pilot error because he did not respect the minimum altitude set by international rules."
A French military team was expected in Egypt on Sunday to open its own enquiry. "The aircraft is a twin-engine transport plane which carries out liaison missions and constitutes France's contribution to the force," a French military source in Cairo said. French President Jacques Chirac, who is set to be replaced following the outcome of a presidential election being held on Sunday, voiced his "great sadness" at the accident. The MFO is an independent peacekeeping force not related to the United Nations, created as a result of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty and funded mainly by the two neighbours and the United States. The approximately 2,000-strong force was set up in 1982 and includes troops from 11 countries, including a large US contingent. It is based in two camps in the Sinai peninsula. According to the MFO's website, the aircraft is a DHC-6 Twin Otter which provides transport between the force's two camps.