KHARTOUM, Sudan- In a blow to Sudan's powerful military at a critical point in the civil war, the country's deputy defense minister and 13 other high-ranking officers were killed Wednesday as their plane crashed on takeoff in the war-torn south.

The Russian-made Antonov plane broke in two after it skidded off the runway in bad weather, military spokesman Lt. Gen. Mohammed Bashir Osman said. He did not describe the weather, but it was believed to be a sandstorm.

Sixteen people on the plane survived the crash, six of whom were flown to Khartoum for treatment, Osman said. He said the crash site was far away from the war zone.

State television broadcast pictures of the wrecked plane, its fuselage broken into pieces and gutted by fire. Part of the plane lay smoldering by a small building.

Sudan's rebels had no troops in the area at the time of the crash, said Samson Kwaje, a spokesman for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army in Nairobi, Kenya.

The deputy defense minister, Col. Ibrahim Shamsul-Din, and the others had been touring a southern military area and were headed back to Khartoum when their plane crashed, state television said.

Besides the deputy defense minister, those killed were a general, seven lieutenant generals, three brigadiers, a lieutenant colonel, a colonel and a corporal.

The crash took place in Adaril, in an oil-rich area 470 miles south of Khartoum that has been the scene of attacks on aircraft by southern rebels.

Shamsul-Din had backed the coup in which President Omar el-Bashir's took power in 1989. The military remains the main power broker in Sudan, not least because the country has been embroiled in civil war for 18 years.

All the dead were buried in Adaril hours after the crash, Osman said. Muslim tradition holds that burial take place following the first noon prayers after death.

In Khartoum on Wednesday night, el-Bashir hailed the dead as martyrs whom God had chosen ''because they are the best among us, because they are the purest, because He loves them.''

Interrupted by repeated cries of ''No God but Allah,'' the president vowed to continue the war to liberate towns from rebel control.

The blow to Sudan's military hierarchy came amid sharpening tensions between the government and opposition leader Hassan Turabi, a rightist Islamic ideologue. Turabi was arrested earlier this year after his party announced it was forging an alliance with southern rebels.
hello there & you too