CAIRO: A Sudanese military aircraft crashed while attempting to land in the east of the country, killing all the crew, military officials said Wednesday, in the latest plane crash in the war-torn African nation.
The Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane experienced technical failure while attempting to land Tuesday in the Osman Digna Air Base in the coastal city of Port Sudan, two officials said.
They said the crew were killed but didn’t disclose how many personnel were on board. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media.
Among the dead was military pilot Omran Mirghani, according to his uncle, prominent Sudanese journalist Osman Mirghani, who mourned his nephew’s death on social media.
The military didn’t comment on the crash.
Plane crashes are not uncommon in Sudan, which has a poor aviation safety record. In February, at least 46 people, including women and children, were killed when a military aircraft crashed in a densely populated area in Omdurman, the sister city of the capital, Khartoum.
The crash came as the miliary has suffered multiple setbacks in its war against a notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The miliary lost el-Fasher, its last stronghold in the sprawling region of Darfur in October, and earlier this week was forced to pull out from the country’s largest oil processing facility in the central region of Kordofan.
The war in Sudan began in April 2023 over a power struggle between the miliary and the RSF. The conflict has killed over 40,000 people — a figure rights groups consider a significant undercount.
The fighting has wrecked urban areas and has been marked by atrocities, including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings, that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.
The war has also created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and pushed parts of the country into famine.