Thursday's flights were not easy ones for several reasons. In a sad reminder of the hatred and violence which plague this country we received a call from an International NGO on Tuesday requesting a flight to Yei, south west of Juba, to collect several staff members and the bodies of two of their colleagues who had been shot that morning.
A group of national staff members of this INGO had been travelling by road to/from Yei when they were ambushed by about 30 armed men. They were taken into the bush and assaulted, during which two of the staff were singled out because of their tribal background and shot dead. The others were then told to put the bodies in their vehicle and take them away.
One of our other pilots did that flight down to Yei on Tuesday afternoon to collect the five people plus the bodies of their colleagues.
On Thursday we had been chartered to fly the bodies of the victims up to their home areas to return them to their families, and that was my flight. There had been some miss-communication between the INGO and family members which resulted in a slight delay in the morning as we worked out the details. Fortunately the weather was much better than the day before, which made things a little more straight forward and I was glad that we could complete the flights to allow the families to grieve such a sad and senseless loss.
