PAKISTAN: A US military refuelling aircraft with seven Marines on board crashed into a mountain in Pakistan yesterday while trying to land at a base used by American forces fighting in Afghanistan, US officials said.
The KC-130 crashed near Shamsi, Pakistan, while making a landing approach. The plane was on a multi-stop mission and the flight had originated in Jacobabad, Pakistan, US Central Command, which oversees US military operations in the region, said in a statement.
There was no immediate information about the identity and condition of the Marines on board, but US forces were making their way to the crash site to investigate, officials said.
"It just breaks your heart," Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon.
"It is a tough, dangerous business over there and they are doing difficult things and they are doing them darned well," he said, referring to the three months of US military action in Afghanistan as part of its war on international terrorism.
The KC-130 is a refuelling version of the workhorse C-130 cargo plane. The four-engine, turbo-prop C-130, built by Lockheed Martin Corporation is used for a wide range of missions, from carrying troops and cargo to electronic jamming.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan's interim authority admitted yesterday that seven senior Taliban officials had surrendered this week in Kandahar but had been set free by a local militia leader, without reference to the administration in Kabul or the US. Omar Samad, spokesman for the authority's foreign ministry, said he could not confirm the identities of all seven, but said they included the former Taliban justice minister and the Taliban's former security chief in the city of Herat. He said the others included "Taliban elders".
Their surrender and immediate pardon by Gul Agha, a militia commander in the south-western city of Kandahar, is a serious embarrassment for the three-week old Kabul administration and a stark indication of the limits of its authority.
"The preferred manner is for local authorities and the central government both to be involved in such cases. We don't yet know what happened," Samad said.
He said the Kabul administration was investigating whether the seven men could have been considered "war criminals" or associates of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, in which case he said they would be recaptured and brought to justice. However, Samad also said the seven were likely to have returned already to their villages and may even have fled from Afghanistan. The release of the seven is likely to infuriate Washington, which has so far met with limited success in securing the capture of leading Taliban and al-Qaeda figures. - (Financial Times/Reuters)
A 15-year-old Florida pilot who crashed a stolen plane into a Tampa office building had a prescription for an acne drug that carried a label warning it might cause depression and suicide, police said yesterday. Charles Bishop killed himself on Saturday when he flew a single-engine Cessna into the 28th floor of the 42-storey Bank of America building in downtown Tampa.-