-Caveat Lector- Sunday April 22 2:43 AM ET US Missionaries Downed Over Peru Set to Fly Home By Simon Gardner LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - American missionaries shot down by a Peruvian Air Force jet over the Amazon Jungle were due to fly home to the United States early Sunday, taking with them the bodies of a mother and her baby killed in the incident. The United States said Saturday its own anti-drug surveillance plane located the missionaries for the Peruvian jet, saying they were mistaken for drug smugglers. The White House called the incident a ``tragic accident,'' while a U.S. embassy official in Lima said the United States had now suspended such ``interdiction'' surveillance flights. Roni Bowers, 35, of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and her 7-month-old daughter Charity were killed when the plane was riddled with bullets Friday and ditched into the Amazon River some 120 miles (200 km) from the Colombian border. Bowers' husband, Jim, and their son, Cory, escaped unhurt. The couple, from Muskegon, Michigan, had worked in Peru since 1993. The Cessna's pilot, Kevin Donaldson, also survived, but was hit by a bullet in the leg, which his son said severed major arteries. ``I will talk later,'' was all Donaldson said to reporters in Spanish after being transported along the Amazon on a stretcher in a wooden canoe en-route to Lima. It was not clear whether the two families would travel on a commercial, private or U.S. government plane, or when. The U.S. Embassy and Peruvian government, military and airport officials all refused to comment. The U.S. admission that it helped the Peruvian jet came late Saturday, after carefully avoiding admitting any role in the incident for much of the day. ``An unarmed U.S. government tracking aircraft was in the area and provided location data for the subsequent intercept mission that was conducted by the Peruvian Air Force,'' a State Department official said on condition of anonymity. Mistaken For Smugglers ``It was mistaken for an airplane carrying contraband drugs,'' the spokesman added, saying that while unarmed U.S. aircraft pass location information to the Peruvian Air Force, the Peruvians were ``responsible for identifying aircraft and deciding on any action.'' Military activity and drug trafficking is rife in the jungle area where the missionaries went down in northern Peru. ``The United States is certainly upset by the fact that two American citizens lost their lives,'' President Bush (news - web sites) said at a Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Canada. The State Department spokesman said the U.S. aircraft was in the area as part of a long-standing U.S. program to support anti-drug efforts in Peru, involving the State Department, CIA (news - web sites), Defense Department, Drug Enforcement Agency and other agencies. He did not say which U.S. agency operated the plane or its type. The Washington Post, however, carried a report in its Sunday edition saying it was a U.S. Customs Service Cessna Citation. The Post also quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying the U.S. military had intercepted a communication between unknown parties calling for a halt in the interception. ``We monitored a communication that said you should not intercept with violence, to wait, hold off,'' the Post quoted the official as saying. Neither State Department or Defense officials could confirm the report. The Peruvian Air Force said in a communique Friday it opened fire on the missionaries' Cessna 185 ``floatplane'' after it failed to heed warnings to land, adding it had no published flight plan. But it refused to comment further. A Peruvian Defense Ministry spokesman had previously said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) intercepted the plane -- which was not mentioned in the communique. The DEA could not be reached for comment. Donaldson's son, Benjamin, said Bowers -- who had reported seeing an American plane in the air at the time of the incident -- had been questioned by DEA agents. ``He said he was asked basic questions by the DEA, who then moved him to a hotel room,'' he told Reuters by telephone from Iquitos before heading to Lima to catch a connecting flight to the U.S. When Reuters later called the Iquitos El Dorado hotel, staff said American ``police agents'' were with him, and would not allow anyone to talk to him. Donaldson's wife, Bobbi, said Bowers had reported to Peru's air traffic authorities by radio before the attack and believed his wife and daughter had been killed by the same bullet. ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES http://www.anomalous-images.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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