South Sudan's defence minister was killed on Friday in a plane crash along with at least 18 other people, most of them senior members of the southern former rebel leadership. Dominic Dim Deng's plane crashed some 375 kilometres from the southern capital Juba, the south's vice president Riek Machar told AFP, killing all 23 people on board, most of them army officers.
However, southern president Salva Kiir's spokesman Luka Mariak said that 19 people had died and two survived when the plane came down in the flat, savannah-like region. Machar gave no reason for the crash, but ruled out an attack. Mariak said the accident appeared to be due to a mechanical failure.
Distraught relatives gathered at Juba airport waiting for news, while government offices in the town were closed amid a pervasive mood of gloom, an AFP correspondent reported.
"The plane had been rented from a charter company and was carrying a delegation of leaders from the (former rebel) Sudan People's Liberation Movement from Wau to the capital Juba," 450 kilometres to the south-east, he said. The UN Mission in Sudan has sent a helicopter to the area, the United Nations said. Besides Deng, an advisor to south Sudan leader and national First Vice President Salva Kiir was also on board, Machar said.
Kiir's predecessor and southern rebel leader John Garang died in July 2005 when the Ugandan presidential helicopter he was travelling in crashed into a mountainside in southern Sudan, with some suspecting foul play.
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