From: Barry Stoller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: India claims to down Pakistani spy plane HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- AP. 6 January 2002. India Claims to Shoot Down Spy Plane. JAMMU, India -- Indian soldiers shot down an unmanned Pakistani spy plane that intruded into Indian air space in disputed Kashmir on Sunday, military officials said. Pakistani officials denied this. The drone, which takes aerial photographs, was flying nearly 2.5 miles inside Indian territory in the Poonch sector along the India-Pakistan border when troops fired at it, an Indian army official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. In Islamabad, Pakistani military officials said no Pakistani spy plane had been shot down. "No Pakistani spy plane has been shot down by India in the Himalayan region of Kashmir," a senior military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Another Pakistani military official suggested that India may have shot down a child's remote-control drone [?!]. If confirmed, this would be the first such reported case since 1999, when Indian troops shot down an unmanned Pakistani surveillance plane in the western Gujarat state, soon after the Kargil armed conflict. The Atlantique aircraft had surveillance and strike capability. There were no casualties and the debris landed in Pakistan. Poonch is about 150 miles northwest of Jammu, the winter capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. The Indian official said the plane was seen going down Sunday and soldiers were scouring the mountainous area to locate the debris. It was also possible that a part of the debris could have fallen on the Pakistani side of the border, he said. Eyewitnesses who saw the UAV -- unmanned aerial vehicle -- flying overhead said there was panic among Poonch residents, who thought war had broken out. Since a Dec. 13 terrorist assault on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, India and Pakistan have amassed thousands of troops along the 1,100-mile border between the two nuclear-armed nations and are in a state of preparedness for war. An Indian army spokesman said that the border had been quiet most of the day, but that after the drone was shot down, heavy mortar and artillery fire by both sides began along the border. The spokesman said there were heavy casualties on the Pakistani side. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
