Red Cross pilot killed after aid plane shot over Sudan

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) -- A Danish pilot was killed Wednesday when the Red Cross plane he was flying came under fire in southern Sudan, the aid agency said.

A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the question of responsibility for the firing was "very delicate," and the ICRC was not immediately commenting on it.

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 rebel source said the plane appeared to have been hit by gunfire, not a rocket-propelled grenade, which would have brought the aircraft down.

ICRC spokesman Michael Kleiner said the King Air charter was on a routine flight to pick up passengers in Juba and Wau, two government-controlled towns in the south. The plane was to carry the passengers to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital in the north.

Because of a loss of pressure, Kleiner said, the pilots took the plane down momentarily to 6,500 feet, then took it back up to 8,000 feet. There was an explosion, and the co-pilot, a 26-year-old Danish citizen, died instantly from a severe head injury, Kleiner said.

The main pilot flew the plane, owned by a company named Aviation Assistance, to Lokichoggio in northwestern Kenya, where the flight had originated.

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International Red Cross
Catholic Relief Services
Sudan Government
Sudan Ministry of External Relations
U.S. State Department
  • U.S. Dept. of State, 1999 Human Rights Report on Sudan
  • South Sudan Special Project
Amnesty International, 2000 Report on Sudan
Library of Congress, Country Study on Sudan
Coalition Against Slavery in Mauritania and Sudan
South Sudanese Friends International

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