The
United Nations confirmed that this past Tuesday, a U.N. peacekeeping helicopter
on a routine cargo flight had been shot down as it flew over the oil-producing
Unity State in South Sudan. UTair, the Russian airline that owns the aircraft,
speculated that the helicopter was shot down with a surface to air missile. Of
the four crew members who had been on board, one (the co-pilot) is alive and
being treated for minor injuries by Médecins sans Frontières, but the other three
(commander, flight engineer, and flight attendant) had been killed. UTair,
which has been working with the UN since 1991, stated that it would temporarily
halt flights over this area.
The
UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) confirmed that the Mi-8 helicopter, which
was contracted to the UN Mission and had been flying from Wau in the southwest
region of Sudan to Bentiu in the north, had crashed about 6 miles south of
Bentiu. A spokesperson for the governor of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal State claimed that the South Sudanese
rebel commander had warned the UN last week not to fly over his territory. At
peace talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the rebel delegation issued a statement
denying the South Sudanese government accusations. The rebel statement stated
that “the area in which the (aircraft) was reportedly shot down is
government-held territory, if indeed the aircraft was shot down.”
