Khartoum - Sudan's First Vice-President, Lieut-Gen AlZubeir Mohammad Saleh, and two senior aides were killed when their plane crashed in a river in heavy fog in southern Sudan yesterday, official media said. The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) said Gen Saleh's plane was shot down by its rebels.
"It was not a crash," Mr Justin Yaac, spokesman for the SPLA's political wing, said in Nairobi. "The plane was on its way to Juba [southern Sudan] and when it was in an area we control we shot it down." The claim could not be independently confirmed.