WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (AFP) - A senior US general said Wednesday he believes that the January 30 crash of a British C-130 aircraft in Iraq was due to an attack rather than a technical problem with the aircraft.
Lieutenant General Lance Smith, deputy commander of the US Central Command in Iraq, emphasized that it was his personal impression, and not the result of an ongoing enquiry into the incident, which killed nine members of the Royal Air Force and another soldier.
"I personally believe that there may have been hostile action or something that happened inside the aircraft, but I don't think it was mechanical in nature," Smith told reporters at the Pentagon.
Smith said that the Royal Air Force transport plane could have been victim of small-arms fire, or even "a lucky shot from an RPG", or rocket-propelled grenade.
"I don't believe that the airplane went down from a (shoulder-fired) missile," he said.
The cause of the crash of the C-130 Hercules plane just northwest of Baghdad on January 30, which resulted in Britain's largest single-day loss of life since it helped launch the Iraq war in March 2003, is still being investigated.
Two Islamist organizations have claimed responsibility for the crash, one of them releasing a videotape which showed the firing of what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile and then the scattered debris of an aircraft.
Smith called the tape "bogus", saying "nothing looked right" on it.
02/09/2005 18:25 GMT - AFP