UN Security Council conveys sympathy to families of Haiti plane crash victims

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- UN Security Council Saturday issued a press statement to convey its sympathy and condolences to families of victims in Friday's deadly UN plane crash in Haiti.

"Members of the Security Council have learned with deep distress and shock of the deadly crash," said the statement issued by Vietnamese Ambassador to the UN Le Luong Minh, who is the council president of this month.

"On behalf of the members of the Council, I wish to convey our heartfelt sympathy and condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in this terrible incident, "Minh said in the statement.

A plane affiliated to the UN peacekeeping mission Friday crashed in a mountainous area of south-eastern Haiti, killing all 11 people aboard.

The mission, known as MINUSTAH, said that the plane was on a regular reconnaissance flight when it crashed around noon into the side of a mountain in the Fonds-Verrettes area, about 45 kilometres from Port-au-Prince, capital of the Caribbean country.

The bodies of the 11 passengers and crew were recovered from the crash site and transported back to Port-au-Prince, where the headquarters of MINUSTAH is located. The names of the people killed have not yet been released but the UN confirmed that the victims include Uruguayan and Jordanian military officers serving with the mission.

MINUSTAH reported that an investigation was already under way into the cause of the crash of the Uruguayan CASA-212 military aircraft, which had departed from Port-au-Prince on a surveillance flight over an area near the Haitian border with the Dominican Republic.

MINUSTAH has been in place in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, since mid-2004 after the then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide went into exile amid violent unrest. Currently there are more than 9,000 military and police personnel deployed and nearly 2,000 civilian staff.