Dutch aid pilot killed over Sudan

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The Danish co-pilot of a Red Cross plane has been killed after his aircraft was fired on as it flew over southern Sudan.

Red Cross spokesman Michael Kleiner said the cockpit and right wing was damaged, killing the 26-year-old man.

Kleiner, who said the victim's name was being withheld by the International Committee of the Red Cross until his family could be notified, said the nine-seat King Air plane was struck twice.

Before the plane was hit, a technical problem caused a loss in cabin pressure, he said.

As a result, halfway between Lokichokio and Juba, Sudan, it dropped to 6,500 feet for one minute and then went back up to 8,500 feet.

The plane's descent from its normal cruising altitude of 19,000 feet to 6,500 feet would have put it in range of anti-aircraft guns.

"When it came back to 8,500 feet there was an explosion heard by the pilot, and the co-pilot died instantly," Kleiner said.

"There were two impacts, one where the co-pilot was sitting and one under the right wing," he said.

He said the question of responsibility for the firing was "very delicate," and the ICRC was not immediately commenting on it.

Pilot survives shooting

A source in the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, which controls part of the area where the plane was shot, told CNN he was "not saying one of our people would not have done it."

But the source said a number of other armed forces frequent the area where the plane was hit, including pro-government militias and government forces.

The pilot, who was not injured, managed to land the damaged plane in Lokichokio in northwestern Kenya, Kleiner said.

No one else was aboard the twin-engine, turboprop aircraft, which was clearly marked with Red Cross insignia.

It had been on a scheduled weekly flight from Lokichokio, the base for most relief operations in southern Sudan, to Sudan's capital, Khartoum, and had received permission from the government of Sudan to make the flight.

Southern Sudanese rebels and government forces have been fighting a civil war in southern Sudan since 1983.

The plane was over government-held Sudan at the time of the explosion. The rebels have only a few anti-aircraft weapons and no aircraft.

Comment from the Sudanese government was not immediately available.

The co-pilot's death follows an attack in northeastern Congo on April 26, when six Red Cross workers were shot and hacked to death.

The reason for that attack is still unknown.

The Red Cross provides medical care to war victims and regularly evacuates war wounded from southern Sudan to a 560-bed field hospital in Lokichokio.

Red Cross planes were bombed while on the ground in rebel-held southern Sudan three times in the last year, Kleiner said.

Kleiner said the co-pilot's body would be flown to Nairobi before being returned to Denmark. He said no decision had been made yet whether to suspend flights over Sudan.

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International Red Cross

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