Bomb could have caused crash

2005-02-01 08:08

London - A British transport plane which crashed in Iraq with the loss of 10 lives might have been destroyed by a bomb planted on board rather than being struck by a missile, a report said late on Monday.

The Royal Air Force C-130 Hercules came down northwest of Baghdad on Sunday, with nine RAF personnel and a soldier missing and believed dead, Britain's biggest single loss since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) in London is investigating what happened, but has refused to comment as yet on reports the plane might have been shot down.

Doha-based Al-Jazeera television aired a video on Monday purporting to show the downing of the plane by Iraq insurgents, the footage showing the launch of a rocket, a fireball and wreckage of what was alleged to be the British plane.

However, the Sun newspaper said it had been told the plane was at an altitude of 4 500metres when it exploded en route from Baghdad to the town of Balad, too high for such a missile to be to blame.

Citing what it called a "senior MoD insider", the paper said military investigators were instead looking into whether a bomb had been placed inside the plane itself.

"It is clear the C-130 exploded in mid-air and shattered into thousands of pieces," the source told the paper's Tuesday edition.

"A bomb could have been planted on the plane when it refuelled in Baghdad and stopped to collect passengers and cargo."

The newspaper said the video shown on Al-Jazeera was also doubtful for other reasons, such as the fact it shows the explosion in cloudy weather, when the crash happened in clear skies.

- AFP