PERU AIR FORCE SHOOTS DOWN SUSPECTED DRUG PLANE OVER JUNGLE

LIMA, Peru -- Peruvian air force fighter jets shot down a small plane
suspected of narcotics running in the central Amazon near the border with
Brazil, authorities said Tuesday.

The jets downed the plane with machine gun fire Monday over dense jungle
about 370 miles northeast of Lima after its pilot failed to respond to
radio messages and ignored warning shots, the air force said.

Police were searching for the wreckage. The fate of the plane's occupants
was not known.

In the early 1990s, President Alberto Fujimori adopted tough anti-narcotics
policies to eliminate Peru's infamous title as the world's largest producer
of coca, the raw material used to make cocaine.

The measures included shooting down some 25 drug planes en route from camps
in Peru's Amazon to Colombian cocaine refineries.

The air force said Tuesday that the last time a suspected plane was shot
down was in 1997.