Iraq Claims It Shot Down Spy Plane

Officials at the Iraqi Information Ministry said they were expecting a videotape showing the wreckage of the downed plane and that Iraqi television would air the footage when it arrived, Reuters reports.

U.S. officials say it’s still not clear what happened to the $3.2 million plane, an Air Force RQ-1B “Predator” aircraft.

“The aircraft may have crashed or been shot down,” Lt. Col. David Lapan of the Marines, a Defense Dept. spokesman, said.

U.S. officials lost contact with the plane around 2 a.m. Eastern time while it was flying near the southern city of Basra, the Associated Press reports.

Lapan said all manned U.S. planes had returned safely.

Spokesman Col. Rick Thomas of the U.S. Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida said there is no plan to recover the plane.

“No sensitive technology will be compromised by not recovering the aircraft,” Thomas said.

The Predator aircraft was part of a $25 million system made up of four planes and commanded by a ground control station. Such planes are equipped for day and night flights and are capable of sending radar images and full motion video.

U.S. and British planes regularly patrol two “no-fly zones” in northern and southern Iraq, often coming under fire from Iraqi surface-to-air defenses.

Iraqi officials have mounted a military effort to fight off what one military spokesman called “the planes of aggression”.

So far, Iraq’s defenses have not shot down any manned aircraft since the zones were established in 1991. U.S. officials say the areas are meant to protect Kurdish and Shiite populations from possible attacks by the Iraqi army.