New York, Oct 12 2009 5:10PM
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti will hold a memorial ceremony tomorrow in the capital, Port-au-Prince, to honour the 11 military officers killed when a plane crashed last Friday into a mountainside in the southeast of the country.
Six Uruguayans and five Jordanians died in the crash and their bodies will be repatriated after tomorrow's service, the mission – known as <"http://www.un.org/depts/dpko/missions/minustah/">MINUSTAH – said in a press release issued today.
The crash site, located in the Fonds-Verrettes area, has been secured and the investigation into the cause of the accident is expected to take several weeks, MINUSTAH said. The plane had been on a routine surveillance flight near the border with the Dominican Republic when it struck the mountain around noon.
The mission said it was touched by the many messages of condolences and support it has received from around the world in the wake of the crash.
The Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon have both issued statements offering their condolences and voicing sorrow at learning of the news of the crash.
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.
Oct 12 2009 5:10PM
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