Indian fighter jets shoot down Pakistani maritime patrol aircraft, killing 16 servicemen

Indian fighter jets shot down a Pakistani maritime reconnaissance aircraft on a training flight yesterday, killing all 16 servicemen aboard and heightening tension between the two nuclear enemies barely four weeks after they disengaged militarily in northern Kashmir state.

Pakistan said it would "take appropriate measures for self-defence" in response to the Indian action.

Indian military officials claimed the Pakistan navy's French-built Atlantic 1 anti-submarine maritime patrol aircraft was shot down a mile inside Indian air space in western Gujarat state.

But Pakistan denied this, saying the unarmed aircraft, on a routine training flight carrying six trainee officers and 10 sailors was downed "well inside" its own territory near Badin, some 160 miles east of the southern port city of Karachi.

No independent confirmation was possible as to the crash site until late yesterday.

Officials from either side also claimed the aircraft wreckage was on their side of the border and that helicopters had been dispatched to the remote, marshy region to recover whatever pieces it could to substantiate their declarations.

"We are carrying out recoveries in the area and will soon have parts of the wreckage," an Indian Air Force spokesman said. Indian Air Force officials said the Pakistani aircraft was shot down around 11.15 a.m. local time by a missile after failing to respond to at least two warnings by two MiG 21 fighters scrambled from the Nalia air base in the west, to identify itself and land at a local air base.

"The Pakistani aircraft acted in a hostile manner by turning on our fighters, leaving the Indian pilots no choice but to shoot it down," an official spokesman said. The air-to-air missile, he said, hit the aircraft's port engine which caught fire before crashing. The spokesman added that Pakistani naval aircraft had previously violated Indian air space on eight occasions between May and July at the height of the Kashmir conflict.

Pakistan's information minister, Mr Mushahid Hussain, meanwhile, said his country reserved the right to take "appropriate measures for its self-defence".

Speaking to BBC television yesterday he said India was "getting even" for losing two fighter jets and one attack helicopter during the Kashmir clashes in May which ended after last month after 11 weeks of fighting in which nearly 1,200 people died.

India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence 52 years ago, have an Air Intrusion Treaty that requires all military aircraft operating within six miles of the border to inform the other side. "This was not done yesterday," an official spokesman in Delhi said.

Military officials claimed there were regular incursions by Pakistani unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into Indian territory, especially during military exercises in the western Rasjasthan desert, close to where the maritime patrol aircraft was shot down yesterday.

They said most incursions went unnoticed as Indian civilian radar was not equipped to easily detect the UAVs' "miniature signature". Security officials, meanwhile, were concerned that deteriorating relations with Pakistan would become worse after the shooting down of the aircraft.

"Pakistan is bound to retaliate," said a senior official. "It's in keeping with the military rivalry that prevails between the two enemies. India would now have to be vigilant," he added.