Peru airforce error

U.S. Watched Peru Shoot Down Plane

By MONTE HAYES, Associated Press Writer

IQUITOS, Peru (AP) - A U.S. surveillance plane monitored the Peruvian air force's downing of a plane carrying American missionaries mistaken for drug smugglers, a U.S. Embassy official said Saturday. A woman and her infant daughter from Michigan were killed in the shooting and crash.

The U.S. official, who asked not be identified by name, declined to specify whether the U.S. tracking plane provided the position of the single-engine floater plane, but implied that was the case.

``A U.S. government tracking aircraft was in the area in support of the Peruvian intercept mission,'' he said in Lima. ``As part of an agreement between the United States and Peru, the United States provides tracking information on planes suspected of smuggling illegal drugs in the region to the Peruvian air force.''

The statement came after one of the three survivors reportedly said that an American aircraft was flying nearby at the time the Peruvian jet shot down the missionaries' plane Friday morning over the Amazon River.

Peru's air force issued a statement early Saturday confirming that the missionaries' plane was shot down after it was detected at 10:05 a.m. local time by ``an air space surveillance and control system'' run jointly by Peru and the United States.

The statement said the plane entered Peruvian air space from Brazil without filing a flight plan and that it was fired on after the pilot failed to respond to ``international procedures of identification and interception.''

The survivors told of how the pilot, a veteran, second-generation missionary, was shot in the leg during the flight. He then lost control of the flaming, single-engine plane before managing to guide it into the river, where the survivors floated on the craft's pontoons for a half-hour before being rescued by local villagers.

The Rev. E.C. Haskell, spokesman for the Baptist association, of New Cumberland, Pa., said the plane was en route from the Brazil-Peru border to the city of Iquitos, about 625 miles northeast of Lima, when it was attacked.

Missionary Veronica ``Ronnie'' Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, were both killed and pilot Kevin Donaldson was wounded, he said.

Also on board and unhurt were Bowers' husband, Jim Bowers, 35, and their 6-year-old son Cory, said Haskell. The family is from Muskegon, Mich., and the Donaldsons from Morgantown, Pa., Haskell said.

The missionary group has worked in Peru since 1939, according to its Web site. It helps found Baptist churches in the Iquitos area and other parts of the upper Amazon, and sends missionaries into remote areas along the river's tributaries.

Donaldson's wife, Bobbi, said her husband guided the plane into the river, where it flipped over. Veronica Bowers was holding her daughter on her lap when a bullet struck her in the back and then hit the child, Mrs. Donaldson said in a telephone interview from her home in Iquitos.

Mrs. Donaldson said ``there were two rounds of fire,'' and that the Peruvian jet fighter continued to fire as the plane went down.

The telephones were busy through the night Friday night at the regional command in Iquitos, and there was no answer Saturday morning at the defense ministry.

Quoting survivors, Mrs. Donaldson said local villagers brought the three survivors and two dead bodies to shore. After her husband ``filled one canoe with blood, they put him a speedboat to take him for help'' to a nearby jungle clinic, she said. He remained there Saturday morning.

The Bowers had been returning from Leticia, Colombia, where they had picked up a Peruvian residency visa for Charity, Mrs. Donaldson said.

She said another Peruvian air force plane - called in by the jet fighter - had taken Jim Bowers, his son, his dead wife and daughter back to Iquitos. Late Friday, Rev. Bill Rudd, the Bowers' minister in Fruitport, Mich., said the family planned to return to the United States on Saturday.

A U.S. official said U.S. Embassy personnel had traveled to the crash scene late Friday.

Mrs. Donaldson quoted Jim Bowers as saying that during the incident, he saw a plane flying nearby and that he believed it was an American aircraft. She also quoted him as saying that he was kept by unidentified U.S. agents for two hours in Iquitos before he was allowed to identify his wife's body.

``We don't understand. We would like some answers,'' she said.

U.S. officials did not immediately respond to the complaint.

Between 1994 and 1997, Peru shot down about 25 suspected drug planes on their way to Colombian cocaine refineries from coca-growing regions in Peru's Amazon.

The actions were the result of former President Alberto Fujimori (news - web sites)'s tough anti-narcotics policies in an effort to reducing trafficking in coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine.

In July, Fujimori said the country would use its fleet of 18 Russian-made Sukhoi-25 fighter jets in the anti-drug fight. The planes were originally bought after a brief border war with Ecuador in 1995.

Haskell said Kevin Donaldson grew up in Peru. Their group runs a theological seminary, schools, a camp and a center for pregnant women.



ANGELIQUE