MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UN plane crashes in Haiti killing Uruguayan and Jordanian peacekeepers

he cause of the crash remains unknown

Eleven United Nations peacekeepers, six of them Uruguayans were killed Friday when their surveillance plane crashed into a mountainside in Haiti during a routine patrol, United Nations officials said.

A rescue team confirmed that there were no survivors among the 11 crew members and military personnel on the plane, a Casa 212, when it went down near the town of Fonds-Verrettes, near the border with the Dominican Republic.

The people on board were Uruguayans and Jordanians, said Vannina Maestracci, a United Nations spokeswoman. The cause of the crash was unknown.

In a statement, the United Nations said that the plane, “carrying 11 passengers, including the crew, crashed southeast of the commune of Ganthier.”

“The (Uruguayan) Casa 212 aircraft was making a reconnaissance flight at the time of the accident before hitting a mountainside,” the statement read.

The peacekeeping force, which has been in Haiti since 2004, consists of about 9,000 troops and police officers.

Local officials said the plane went down in a remote area near the village of Pays-Pourri in the district of Ganthier, a farming region area east of Port-au-Prince, the capital.

“It’s in a very inaccessible area, about six hours on foot from Ganthier,” Ralph Lapointe, the mayor of Ganthier, said in a telephone interview.

“It happened shortly before noon,” he said. “I saw several U.N. helicopters flying toward the area. It seems that they have already recovered the bodies”.