American Pilot Shot Down in War Zone, Angola Reports
Angolan jet fighters shot down a small plane piloted by an American suspected of spying for South Africa over war-torn southern Angola, the official Angolan news agency said Friday.
The ANGOP agency, citing unidentified military sources, said that the plane was shot down Tuesday, but that the pilot survived. It identified the aircraft as a single-engine Bonanza but did not name the pilot, whose nationality was determined by a passport.
Quoting sources in the southern military headquarters of Lubango, ANGOP said the plane was downed by Angolan air force jets in Cahama district, about 47 miles north of the border with South African-administered Namibia, and that, “It is very possible that it (the plane) was on a spying mission for troops of the Pretoria regime.”
Southern Angola has been the scene of repeated South African cross-border attacks.
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