PERU SHOOTS DOWN MISSIONARY PLANE

LIMA, Peru - A Peruvian air force jet shot down a small plane carrying
American missionaries in Peru's Amazon jungle region Friday, killing a
missionary and her infant daughter.

"Apparently the Peruvian pilot mistook it for an airplane transporting
contraband drugs," U.S. Embassy spokesman Benjamin Ziff told The
Associated Press.

Peru's air force issued a statement early Saturday confirming that the
missionary plane was shot down Friday morning after it was detected by
"an air space surveillance and control system' operated jointly with
the United States for counter-narcotics efforts.

The statement said the plane entered Peruvian air space from Brazil
without filing a flight plan and that it was fired upon to force it
down after the pilot failed to identify himself.

The Rev. E.C. Haskell, spokesman for the Association of Baptists for
World Evangelism, said five people were aboard the group's plane when
it was attacked en route from the Peru-Brazil border to the Peruvian
city of Iquitos, 625 miles northeast of Lima.

Missionary Veronica "Ronnie" Bowers, 35, of Muskegon, Mich., and her
7-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, were both killed and veteran
missionary pilot Kevin Donaldson of Morgantown, Pa. was wounded, he
said.

Also on board and unhurt were Bowers' husband, Jim Bowers, 35, and
their 6-year-old son Cory, said Haskell. The missionary group's U.S.
base is in New Cumberland, Pa.

Donaldson's wife, Bobbi, told The Associated Press that her husband
was shot in the leg and lost control of the single-engine plane, which
was in flames, but managed to guide the aircraft into the Amazon
river, where it flipped over.

Veronica Bowers was holding her daughter on her lap when a bullet
struck her in the back, killing both her and the child, Bobbi
Donaldson said in a telephone interview from her home in Iquitos.

She told CNN in a separate interview that her husband's "leg was
fractured by the bullet that went in through his calf. He bled quite
profusely floating in the Amazon."

She said the military plane continued to fire even after the small
plane landed on the river.

Haskell said the survivors sat on the pontoons for about 45 minutes
before being rescued by some Peruvians in a dugout canoe.

"All the natives there knew them; it wasn't like they were strangers,"
Haskell said. They were taken to a clinic.

The group was returning from Leticia, Brazil, where they had picked up
a Peruvian residency visa for the infant, Bobbi Donaldson said.

She added that a Peruvian air force plane took Jim Bowers, his son,
and his dead wife and daughter, back to Iquitos, the capital of
Amazonas province. Her husband was still in a rural clinic near the
crash site.

The incident was the second time in a decade that the Peruvian air
force has mistaken aircraft carrying American citizens for drug
traffickers. In April 1992, the Peruvian air force shot at a U.S. Air
Force transport plane flying off Peru's Pacific coast.

Between 1994 and 1997, Peru shot down about 25 suspected drug planes
on their way to Colombian cocaine refineries from coca-growing regions
in Peru's Amazon.

The actions were the result of former President Alberto Fujimori's
tough anti-narcotics policies in an effort to reducing trafficking in
coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine.

Haskell said Donaldson is an experienced pilot and has worked for the
missionary association since 1985. His parents were missionaries, and
he grew up in Peru.

The missionary group has worked in Peru since 1939, according to its
Web site. It helps found Baptist churches in the Iquitos area and
other parts of the upper Amazon, and sends missionaries into remote
areas.

The group runs a theological seminary, schools, a camp and a center
for pregnant women.