Reports: Plane carrying about 20 crashes southern Sudan

By MOHAMED OSMAN Associated Press Writer

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - A plane carrying southern Sudan's defense minister and a presidential adviser crashed Friday, killing all 21 people on board, state media reported.

Nineteen passengers and two crew members were killed when the plane went down in a remote region of southern Sudan, state-run SUNA news agency reported. Minister of Defense Dominic Dim Deng and Justin Yak, an adviser to the Southern Sudan president, were among the dead.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

SUNA said the pilot radioed a control tower in the city of Rumbek just before the crash, requesting permission to land because one of the engines had technical problems. A few minutes later, the tower lost contact with the plane.

Southern Sudan has its own semiautonomous government after a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war between the ethnic African south and Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the capital Khartoum.