Peru's Air Force Shoots Down Missionaries

James Allan (UK Telegraph) reports, "An American missionary and her seven-month-old daughter were killed by the same bullet when a Peruvian military plane shot down their light aircraft over the Amazon jungle, in the mistaken belief that it was carrying drugs.

Peru air force shoots down missionaries
By James Allan

AN American missionary and her seven-month-old daughter were killed by the same bullet when a Peruvian military plane shot down their light aircraft over the Amazon jungle, in the mistaken belief that it was carrying drugs.

The Peruvian defence ministry yesterday expressed "deep regret" for the incident, saying that the air force pilot had confused the Christian missionaries' aircraft "with a plane of narcotics traffickers" and opened fire on it with machine-guns.

The Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, identified the victims as Veronica Bowers, 35, and her daughter, Charity. The baby was sitting on her knee when a bullet struck Mrs Bowers in the back and passed through her, killing them both. Her husband, Jim, 35, and six-year-old son, Cory, were uninjured.

The pilot, Kevin Donaldson, a veteran missionary, temporarily lost control of the sea-plane when another bullet broke his leg, but he managed to bring it under control and land the aircraft on an Amazon waterway. The plane caught fire and flipped over.

The Rev E C Haskell, the administrative executive for the Baptists' Association, said the three survivors sat on pontoons for about 45 minutes before being rescued by some Peruvians in a dugout canoe. He said the aircraft was registered, clearly marked and had filed a flight plan.

He said: "Everything was legal about the flight. He [the pilot] said an air force interceptor approached the plane and began to fire on them. There was no radio contact with the air force plane."

Between 1994 and 1997, Peru shot down about 25 suspected drug aircraft en route to Colombian cocaine refineries from coca-growing areas in Peru's Amazon region. The actions were the result of the former president Alberto Fujimori's tough anti-narcotics policies aimed at reducing trafficking in coca leaf, the raw material used to make cocaine.

The missionaries were returning from Leticia in Brazil, where they had picked up a Peruvian residency visa for the baby. Another Peruvian air force plane took Jim Bowers, his son, and his dead wife and daughter, back to Iquitos, the capital of Amazonas province. The pilot was taken to a local clinic for treatment.

Mr and Mrs Bowers from Muskegon, Michigan, had worked as missionaries in the Amazon region of Peru for almost 10 years. An American State Department official in Washington said embassy officials were on the way to the crash scene.