NAIROBI, Kenya -- Sudanese rebels said Monday they have recovered the bodies of two Americans whose plane crashed into a mountainside before Christmas on the way back from a mission into Sudan's war-torn southern region.
The clandestine radio of the Sudan People's Liberation Army said the rebels 'retrieved the bodies of two pilots whose small Cessna 337 crashed in Didinya Hill in bad weather last December.'
'The plane crashed on the Kenya-Sudan-Uganda border in a no-man's-land and rugged terrain,' said the broadcast monitored in Nairobi.
A source in Nairobi confirmed thebodies of pilot Mike Grennell and missionary Gary Taylor were brought down from the 10,000-foot-high crash site two weeks ago and brought to the town of Kapoeta, Sudan, about 50 miles north of the Kenya border.
The bodies are being kept in the mortuary of a British-built hospital in the town pending diplomatic negotiations for their return to Nairobi, said the source who asked not to be identified.
Grennell, 44, of Brookton Dale, N.Y., and Taylor, 42, of Seattle, disappeared shortly before Christmas and were reported days later to have crashed their light plane at an unknown site in northern Kenya.
Aviation sources said, however, the pair crashed on the way back from a relief station deep inside rebel-held Sudan, where they had tried to repair a plane abandoned by Grennell after an earlier mishap.
The rebel broadcast said the crash site was discovered by members of the local Didinya tribe, who led the rebel forces to the scene.
'The SPLA has sent messages of condolence to the relatives of the pilots,' the radio said. 'The doer (Grennell) had rendered invaluable assistance to the needy people in Sudan.'
Various organizations are involved in flying and trucking food and medical supplies into southern Sudan, where up to 1 million people have died in a 5-year-old civil war and hundreds of thousands more face the threat of starvation.
Grennell, who was known as one of Nairobi's top bush pilots, had made numerous relief flights into the region. He was known to have been accidentally fired on with a rebel SAM missile at least once and had told friends he needed just a few more trips to make enough money to quit.
Grennell, a longtime Nairobi resident, left a wife and three children. Taylor, a staffer with the California-based Life Ministry, had a wife and four children.
