Last Update: February 05, 2023, 23:23 IST
The source of the fire on the helicopter was not yet known and its exact location had yet to be determined. (File photo: Reuters)
A spokesman told AFP that the plane caught fire at around 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) during a flight to Goma, the provincial capital of Nord-Kivu province.
A UN peacekeeper from South Africa was killed and another wounded in an attack on his helicopter in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo on Sunday, the organization said.
A spokesman told AFP that the plane caught fire at around 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) during a flight to Goma, the provincial capital of Nord-Kivu province.
Amadou Ba, a spokesman for the UN mission in the DRC (MONUSCO), said the source of the fire on the helicopter is not yet known and its exact location has yet to be determined.
Militias have plagued the mineral-rich eastern DRC for decades, many of them a legacy of regional wars that flared up in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Since November 2021, the M23 rebel group has captured large parts of the region and has come within miles of Goma, the former’s main commercial centre.
East African leaders on Saturday called for an immediate ceasefire in eastern DRC, at an extraordinary summit called to find ways to calm the raging conflict.
The talks in Burundi were hosted by the seven-nation East African Community (EAC), which is leading mediation efforts to end the fighting in the vast Central African nation.
The resurgent M23 has controlled large swaths of land in the mineral-rich east and fighting continues despite a peace roadmap drawn up in Angola last July and the deployment of an East African Community force in November.
The DRC is littered with minerals and precious stones, but decades of war and chronic mismanagement mean that little of the wealth reaches its population of around 100 million.
read all Breaking News Here
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)