Uh-oh, has it started?

by ozziepost 3 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  ozziepost

  Taliban militia shoots down US spy plane

  AFP - Afghanistan's Taliban militia claimed they had shot down an unmanned United States spy plane in the northern province of Samangan, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.

  Quoting Mawlawi Najibullah, a senior Afghan diplomat in Peshawar, AIP said the unmanned plane was shot down with heavy machine guns early Saturday in the northern province of Samangan, situated close to the border with Uzbekistan.

  ©AAP 2001
  
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  Cheers,
  Ozzie

  "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."
  Anonymous
• 

  Gopher

  PROBABLY NOT! HERE's AN UPDATE

  Link: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010922/wl/attacks_afghanistan.html

  Taliban: Unmanned Plane Shot Down
  By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer

  ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Taliban forces shot down an unmanned spy plane in northern Afghanistan (news - web sites) on Saturday and were trying to determine what nation it belonged to, a Taliban official said.

  A Pentagon (news - web sites) official declined to comment on the reported downing, which came as U.S. forces were preparing for a possible military assault on Afghanistan, which harbors Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

  Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, said the aircraft was shot down over Tashgurgan Pass in Afghanistan's northern Samangan province by Taliban soldiers armed with Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons.

  ``We are still trying to ascertain what country this plane belongs to,'' Zaeef said in an interview.

  The Afghan Islamic Press, an Afghan news agency based in Islamabad, first reported that it was a U.S. spy plane, then said it wasn't sure which country it was from.

  GopherWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
  Mark Twain (1835-1910)
• 

  ozziepost

  Taliban shoots down US spy plane: report

  AFP - Afghanistan's Taliban militia claimed they had shot down an unmanned United States spy plane in the northern province of Samangan, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.

  Quoting Mawlawi Najibullah, a senior Afghan diplomat in Peshawar, AIP said the unmanned plane was shot down with heavy machine guns early today in the northern province of Samangan, close to the border with Uzbekistan.

  It said the incident, the first claim of any military contact between the US and the Taliban, took place in the village of Sang Salad.

  No further details were immediately available.

  Washington has all but declared war on Afghanistan's Taliban, who have defied a US ultimatum to hand over Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

  Unmanned spy planes normally fly at high altitude, far above the reach of heavy machine guns.

  Observers also noted that the Taliban had failed to shoot down a single opposition plane in years of civil war.

  ©AAP 2001

  Cheers,
  Ozzie

  "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."
  Anonymous
• 

  Gopher

  As the old saying goes,

  In war, TRUTH is often the first casualty.

  GopherWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
  Mark Twain (1835-1910)