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New report submitted on cause behind death of former Secretary-General Hammarskjold

Xinhua, June 13, 2015 Adjust font size:

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon said on Friday that a new report on the cause concerning the death of former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in a 1961 airplane crash has been submitted by an independent panel of experts.

There have been allegations over the years that the Swedish plane carrying the then UN's second secretary-general on a peace mission in Africa, originally believed to have crashed because of pilot error, was shot down instead.

The panel visited Zambia to meet with new witnesses and gathered additional new information from member states and other sources, including national and private archives in Belgium, Sweden and the United Kingdom to search for the truth about conditions and circumstances related to the tragic death, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a daily briefing here.

In March, Ban announced appointment of a three-member " Independent Panel of Experts" to assess new information on the death of Hammarskjold and the members of the party accompanying him in the airplane crash.

The report, which is "subject to any considerations of a medical or private nature," will be made available to member states and the public as soon as possible after Ban finishes studying the report, according to Dujarric. Endite