US missile shoots down British jet

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar:  A US Patriot missile battery shot down a British Royal Air Force fighter aircraft yesterday near the Iraqi border with Kuwait, British officials said.

There was no word on the fate of the British crew and no information on their numbers, said Group Capt Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces in the Gulf. But British Ministry of Defence officials said two servicemen were aboard the downed Tornado GR4 jet. “We’re looking now for the evidence of the aircraft’s crash site and, obviously, the crew members,” he said. No other information about the incident or crew was immediately released. The jet, based in Marham, Britain, was returning from an operational mission yesterday and was engaged by the missile battery, said a statement from the British press information centre at US Central Command. “We can confirm that a Tornado GR4 aircraft ... was engaged near the Kuwaiti border by a Patriot missile battery,” the statement said.

Earlier yesterday, US military officials said a US Patriot missile battery may have downed the plane. The British statement did not say the battery was American, but a British military spokeswoman in Qatar said it was. Asked how a US missile could have brought down the plane, Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told ABC’s “This Week” that “procedures and electronic means to identify friendly aircraft and to identify adversary aircraft ... broke down somewhere.” “Central Command is looking into that as we speak. Again, it’s a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the crew members,” Myers told ABC. Lockwood noted the missile is designed to intercept everything above it from incoming ballistic missiles to low-flying cruise missiles. “We wish to find out just as everybody else does, the US as well, why this happened. And we will be carrying out a joint investigation to determine the facts so that we can eliminate this problem forever,” he said.

Britain has sent some 45,000 military personnel to the Persian Gulf to join the US-led attack against Iraq. Fourteen British and nine American servicemen have been killed since the war started on Wednesday night.