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U.S. Plane in Philippines Shot At, Troops Confined to Bases
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soldiers in Philippines ordered to remain on base after U.S. plane shot
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JAKARTA, Feb. 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An MC-130 Special Forces plane was hit by two bullets Thursday while on a low-flight training mission over a mountainous area on the main island of Luzon, missing a U.S. serviceman, the U.S. and the Philippines said.
As a result, hundreds of U.S. troops were confined to their base in the northern Philippines on Friday.
Agence France- Presse (AFP) reported that communist rebels opposed to U.S. anti-terror actions in Mindanao allegedly shot at the plane.
None of the crew was wounded and the plane returned safely to Clark Air Base, the staging ground of one of two simultaneous joint military exercises in the country.
Philippine officials acknowledge that communist New People's Army (NPA) guerillas operate in the area, as well as in the Pinatubo volcano area near Clark, where an American mountain climber was killed in a separate gun attack Wednesday.
The plane and its crew were taking part in an exercise called Balance Piston, which is focused on special operations and counter-terrorism.
U.S. airmen are based at Clark, the former headquarters of the 13th US Air Force that Washington returned to the Philippines' government in 1992.
Meanwhile, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) is believed to have back-peddled in its support for U.S. involvement in the southern Philippines.
Islamic countries ambassadors who earlier supported Philippine President Gloria Arroyo's offensive against the Abu Sayyaf are now reluctant to support the next wave in a United States antiterrorist campaign in the Philippines.
At the roundtable forum, Iranian and Iraqi diplomats criticized U.S. President George W. Bush for statements Bush made in his State of the Union address.
Iranian Ambassador Gholamreza Yousefi said Bush's speech was "very adventurous and irresponsible." He said the international community had recognized the role of Iran in the U.S.-led war against Afghanistan, by hosting more than two million Afghan refugees in its border.
"His statement makes the situation in East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East more complicated," Yousefi said.
Iraqi Chargé d'Affaires Abdul Karim Sweikh also decried Bush's accusations as "baseless." He said that after the Gulf War in 1991, United Nations inspectors were allowed access to Iraqi facilities but failed to find nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
The U.S. has some 1,000 soldiers stationed in the Philippines, in separate garrisons.
The attack against the U.S. airplane and the backtracking by the OIC over its support for the U.S. intervention in Mindanao has cast a cloud over larger joint military operations in the south where about 600 American soldiers are training local troops.
The U.S. joined Philippines troops to hunt down the Abu Sayyaf kidnapping group which allegedly has links to the al-Qaeda network of suspect Osama bin Laden.
With additional reporting By Kazi Mahmood, IOL Correspondent
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