A civilian plane crashed after taking off from an airport in eastern Sudan, killing nine people including four military personnel on board, as the conflict in the northeastern African country reached the 100-day mark on Monday with no signs of abating.
The military said in a statement that a child survived the late Sunday crash in Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea that so far has been spared from the devastating war between the military and rival powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The Antonov plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, the military said. It blamed a technical failure for the crash without elaborating. The statement provided no further details.
Al-Taher Abdel-Rahman, the secretary of Finance Minister Gebreil Ibrahim, was among the dead, according to the minister, who took to social media to mourn his employee.
Sudan has plunged into chaos since mid-April when monthslong tensions between the military and the RSF exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere across the country.
The fighting has turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. The sprawling region of Darfur saw some of the worst bouts of violence in the conflict with the fighting turning into ethnic clashes.
The clashes have killed more than 3,000 people and wounded more than 6,000 others, Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim said in televised comments last month. The casualty tally is likely much higher, according to doctors and activists.
The UN children’s agency said on Monday it recorded the deaths of at least 435 children since the conflict broke out. More than 2,000 other children were wounded, it added.
More than 2.6 million people have fled their homes to safer areas inside Sudan, while more than 757,000 people have crossed into neighbouring countries, according to the UN migration agency.
