World IN BRIEF : PERU : 17 Die as Police Shoot Down Plane

Seventeen people died when officers of the Peruvian national police shot down a commercial airliner as it took off from an airport in a coca-growing region of the Amazon jungle. The army said the police officers may have mistaken the plane for a drug-smuggling aircraft. But Paul Fiedler, the owner of Aerochasqui Airlines, charged that the police apparently were high on cocaine. Lima radio station Radioprogramas said the officers were drunk. The plane, a Spanish-built twin-turboprop Aviocar, was taking off from the Bellavista airport, about 360 miles northeast of Lima, en route to the Amazon city of Pucallpa.