Kinshasa - Eight UN peacekeepers – six Pakistanis, a Russian and a Serb – were killed on Tuesday when a Puma helicopter crashed in the troubled eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), UN and Pakistani officials said.
“While undertaking a reconnaissance mission in Congo, 1 Puma Helicopter crashed. Exact cause of crash is yet to be ascertained,” the Pakistani military’s media wing said. It added that six Pakistani troops were among those killed.
A spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, in New York confirmed the crash and gave the nationality of all eight victims.
Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, expressed his “deep sense of shock and grief”, his office said, paying tribute to the global peace effort by the country’s armed forces.
Congolese military authorities in North Kivu said the M23 rebel group had “shot down” the aircraft, a claim not confirmed by other sources.
The UN mission in the DRC said earlier in a tweet that it had “lost contact” with one of its helicopters, which was on a reconnaissance mission in the Rutshuru region of North Kivu province where Congolese forces have been battling M23 rebels.
The DRC army has explicitly accused Rwanda of supporting an armed rebellion in the east of the vast country, charges Kigali denied on Tuesday.
