Thu Apr 18, 9:20 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. F-16 warplane that mistakenly dropped a 500-pound bomb on Canadian troops in Afghanistan (news - web sites) on Thursday, killing four and wounding eight soldiers, struck after U.S. aircraft thought they had been fired on from the ground, a U.S. defense official said.
Stressing that reports from the desert training area near Kandahar were "very, very preliminary," the official told Reuters that at least one pilot of a flight of U.S. Air Force F-16s thought the planes had been shot at from the ground. Canadian officials said in Ottawa their troops were in a designated training area and that they were not aware of any hostile fire.
The U.S. defense official, who asked not to be identified, said the pilot of the F-16 plane that dropped the laser-guided bomb received permission to do so before the strike was launched.
"It is just a terrible tragedy," Pentagon (news - web sites) spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told Reuters. She declined comment on details of the "friendly fire" incident but said the United States and Canada were investigating the attack, which occurred at 5:25 p.m. Wednesday and shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday in Afghanistan.
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