Global General

UN says missing helicopter in Darfur is back

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-07-28 11:27

UNITED NATIONS - The helicopter which went missing on Monday in Darfur "is back" to safety on Tuesday, but the captain is still unaccounted for, a senior UN official told reporters Tuesday.  

"Fortunately, we've retrieved the helicopter that went missing, and we sent another helicopter to go retrieve it. Both helicopters are now back in Fasha with everybody back, except one. The captain, the Russian, who's gone missing," Ibrahim Gambari, the joint special representative for the hybrid African Union-UN mission in Darfur (UNAMID), told reporters.

"It is not quite clear what is happening, but we are following very closely with the government," he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Gambari told the UN Security Council that a UNAMID helicopter went missing on Monday while transporting members of the Security Arrangements Committee of the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) to locations in South Darfur.

On Tuesday, UNAMID was able to establish contact with three of the four crew members of the helicopter, as well as one international staff who reported to be in safety at a location South of Menawashi, he said.  

Both UNAMID and Sudanese army denied that the helicopter, which belongs to Russian air company UTair, was seized in Darfur, but acknowledged that the helicopter carrying five Sudanese passengers and four Russian crew was missing.

"Apparently, (the helicopter) landed in what was the wrong place, and it seems that it was a place not fully in control of the government," Gambari said. "But in any case the government took this very seriously and worked with us, and we retrieved the helicopter and everybody except the captain and we are working very hard to also see to his release."

The Sudanese army Tuesday confirmed that the helicopter had landed in mud and was initially unable to fly, reports said.

The UTair helicopter is working in Sudan under contract with the United Nations to serve the UNAMID, which took over the peacekeeping task in Darfur from the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) on December 31, 2008.