Fifteen officers dead in plane crash

A Sudanese military aircraft carrying 31 senior army officers from the capital Khartoum to Adar Yill, Upper Nile, crashed at the Adar-Yill airstrip on Wednesday. "The plane lost control on touchdown," a Sudanese official at the Nairobi embassy told IRIN. The official said that 15 people had been killed, including Colonel Ibrahim Shams al-Din, the minister of state for defence. Sixteen others were rescued from the aircraft, including the deputy chief of staff of operations, General Ja'far. According to the official, Shams al-Din was a member of the Revolutionary Council that overthrew the civilian government in 1989, and brought the current head of state, President Umar al-Bashir, to power. He said Shams al-Din and the officers were on a "routine visit to a military post". In a report monitored by the BBC, Sudanese official television said the general command of the Armed Forces had announced "the death of its martyrs... [who] were on an inspection visit in the area". Names of the dead released by the government were Staff Lt-Gen Amir Qasim Musa; Maj Dr Malik al-Aqib al-Haj al-Khadr; Maj-Gen Bakri Umar Khalifah; Maj-Gen Sayyid al-Ubayd Abd al-Halim; Maj-Gen Kamal-al-Din Ali al-Amin; Maj-Gen Ali Arik Kakuwan; Maj-Gen Yasin Arabi Muhammad; Maj Faysal Isa Abu Fatmah; Brig-Gen Eng Umar al-Amin Karrar; Staff-Brig Ahmad Yusuf Mustafa; Staff-Brig Jemmy Apolo Modeh; Col-Eng Uthman Ahmad al-Mustafa; Lt-Gen Umar Uthman Ali Garamba; and Cpl Muhammad Ahmad Muhammad Ya'qub.