U.N. Plane Crashes In Angola

A U.N. aircraft with 14 people on board reportedly crashed Saturday in Angola in an area where the government's army has been fighting UNITA rebels, a U.N. spokesman said.

There was no word on whether any of the four crew members and 10 passengers had survived. There also was no immediate information on the cause of the crash.

The Portuguese news agency Lusa said the aircraft burst into flames shortly after take-off from Huambo, 310 miles southeast of the capital Luanda, and crashed 25 miles away in Vila Nova.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to the Angolan government and UNITA to enable members of the U.N. Observer Mission in Angola to go to the crash site and assist in search and rescue operations.

According to preliminary information from government sources in Huambo, the C-130 probably went down in an area east of Vila Nova, the U.N. spokesman said in a statement.

The Portuguese news agency said U.N. military observers were among the passengers. There was no confirmation from the United Nations.

The plane, owned by TransAfric and chartered by the United Nations, was headed for Saurimo, in the province of Lunda Sul, about 390 miles east of Huambo, according to the news agency.

Annan also called on the two parties to cooperate in a full investigation of the crash, the spokesman said.

The U.N. Security Council has expressed dismay that Angola appears headed back to civil war, which has ravaged the southern African nation for most of its nearly quarter-century of independence.

The fighting has sent more than 50,000 people fleeing from their homes in the central highlands.

Diplomats have been unable to get both sides to adhere to a 1994 peace accord. It called for UNITA, a Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence for Angola, to hand areas under its control to the government. However, lingering hostility between the two sides has hindered implementation of the deal.

The council on Wednesday again accused Angolan rebel leaders of undermining the peace process and demanded an immediate end to the fighting.