Thirty
two people including a Sudanese
government minister and
other officials were killed when a plane taking them to an Islamic festival
crashed in the south of the country on Sunday, state media said.
The plane went down in mountains around
Talodi, a town in the border state of South Kordofan , while taking a
delegation there to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr festival marking the end of the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan, state news agency SUNA said.
The
report blamed the crash on "bad weather conditions" but did not give
further details.
The country's Guidance and Endowments
(religious affairs) Minister Ghazi al-Sadeq was killed in the crash, along with Mahjoub Abdel Raheem Toutou, state minister for youth and sports, and Eissa
Daifallah, state minister for tourism, antiquities and wildlife, it said.
Several
people associated with the country's military, state security and state media
also died in the crash, the agency added.
Abdel
Hafiz Abdel Rahim, a civil aviation spokesman, had earlier told Reuters 31
people had been killed including the crew, but had no other details of their
identities.
The report did not say whether the
plane involved belonged to state-owned Sudan
Airways or another
carrier.
There have been several crashes in
recent years involving Sudan Airways, whose fleet has been degraded by years of
U.S.
sanctions and other problems.
A Sudan Airways cargo plane crashed
while taking off in the United Arab Emirates
in 2009 and another cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Khartoum in 2008.
Oil-producing South Kordofan borders South
Sudan , which seceded in July last year. An
insurgency broke out in South Kordofan shortly before South
Sudan 's independence.
The Sudanese
government accused
rebels of killing a state official and seven other people there in July, but
there was no indication the insurgents were involved in the plane crash.
A spokesman for the main rebel group in
the area, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement North, said it had nothing to
do with the incident.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz and
Alexander Dziadosz; Writing by Edmund Blair and Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by
Andrew Heavens)
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