Lubomir Gelev, the captain of a UN helicopter forced down by SPLA-N rebels had no idea he was flying over a war zone. In the previous two weeks the area underneath his Russian made helicopter had seen the bloodiest and large battles between the rebels and the Sudan government since the forgotten conflict had started in 2011. A full scale offensive using tanks, Mig Fighter jets, and hundreds of technicals against the rebels had just been repelled only days before Gelev was cleared to fly.
The Bulgaria-born helicopter captain is on contract with the World Food Program (WFP), and on January 26, he was flying the officially prescribed flight path from his base in South Sudan to Khartoum for routine maintenance on the aircraft, when it was shot down by the SPLA-N.
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