PERU PLANE SHOT DOWN, KILLS TWO

LIMA, Peru ­­ A Peruvian air force jet shot down a small plane carrying
American missionaries in Peru's Amazon jungle region Friday, the U.S.
embassy said. The missionary group said a woman and her infant daughter
were killed.

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

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, Mrs. 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, Mrs. 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.

There was no immediate comment from Peru's military. Ziff said U.S. Embassy
personnel were traveling to the crash scene late Friday.

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.

In July, Fujimori said the country would use its fleet of 18 Russian-made
Sukhoi-25 fighter jets in the anti-drug fight. The planes were originally
bought after a brief border war with Ecuador in 1995.

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 along the river's
tributaries.

In Lima and other cities, the group runs a theological seminary, schools, a
camp and a center for pregnant women.