MOSCOW, August 30 (RIA Novosti) - With the investigation underway in South Sudan into the downing of a UN helicopter, which killed three Russian crew members and injured one, the country's UN Mission said it was too early to say who was responsible for the crash.
"For investigative purposes, the peacekeeping mission regards the crash as a hostile act against the UN, but it is much too early to assign blame for the incident," United Nations Mission in South Sudan told RIA Novosti.
A UNMISS-contracted Mi-8 helicopter was performing a routine cargo flight from Western Bahr El-Ghazal state capital of Wau Tuesday afternoon, when all radio contact with the aircraft was lost. The helicopter crashed about 10 kilometers southwest of the Unity State capital of Bentiu where it was supposed to land, the UN representative said.
A team of investigators visited the crash site on Wednesday and recovered the aircraft’s black boxes as well as some parts and equipment that are pertinent to the probe, a mission representative said.
The bodies of the three Russian crewmen who died in the crash were flown to Juba along with the only crewman who survived the same day. The survivor is in a stable condition and receiving medical care at the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) hospital.
A memorial ceremony for the killed crewmen was held Friday at the Mission compound. Their remains are expected to be flown to a regional UN support base in city of Entebbe in Uganda, until further arrangements on sending the corpses and the survivor home to Russia are made, according to the Mission.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council unanimously agreed to Russia's press statement proposal urging "a swift, through and transparent investigation" into the incident and called such an attack a grave violation of the Status of Forces Agreement of April 2011.
At least one other Russian UNMISS helicopter has been downed in South Sudan before.
