Posted on 06/18/2011 6:18:25 AM PDT by Cardhu
Troops shoot at jet flying from China with 119 people on board after mistaking it for a N Korean aircraft.
South Korean troops have fired at a passenger airliner flying from China with 119 people on board after mistaking it for a North Korean aircraft, South Korean military and aviation officials say.
Soldiers manning a guard post on Gyodong island, off the western coast of South Korea, fired their K-2 rifles towards the jet, which was descending as it approached Seoul's Incheon International Airport, the officials said on Saturday.
"The firing continued about 10 minutes but the plane was too far off the rifle's range and it did not receive any damage," the South's Yonhap news agency quoted a Marine Corps official as saying.
"When the plane appeared over Jumun island, soldiers mistook it as a North Korean military aircraft and fired."
The aircraft was flying southeast over Jumun island, 12km south of Gyodong, towards Incheon. Gyodong lies just 1.7km south of the North Korean coast.
An aviation controller told the AFP news agency that the Asiana flight from was following a normal route. Asiana is a South Korean-owned airline.
"It was flying normally. It did not deviate from its normal route," the controller said.
The incident on Friday took place close to the tense sea border between the Koreas amid heightened tensions between Seoul in the South and Pyongyang in the North.
South Korean soldiers had been alerted to possible provocative acts by North Korea amid simmering cross-border tensions.
Talking to Al Jazeera, Don Kirk, correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor newspaper in Seoul, said South Korean troops claimed the plane was so off course that they could not identify it, so they fired at it.
"They fired 99 shots, but the aircraft was not damaged...
(Excerpt) Read more at english.aljazeera.net ...
ping
Sounds like crap to me. The South Koreans wouldn’t fire at a plane for 10 minutes without shooting it down.
Sounds like those boys have been drinking again.....
Uh oh. Either way, somebody is up a creek.
Either they were correct in firing, and failed, or they screwed up by firing in the first place.
I would not want to be them. RoK discipline ain’t no joke. (At least it wasn’t back in the ‘70s and ‘80s.)
5.56 mm / .223 cal rifles -- beyond effective range. Sounds like overzealous troops -- not a military action...
Slow news day, al Jazeera?
Al Jazeera.
Sounds like the ROK soldiers need more range time.
nummnutz
10 minutes, no hit = FAIL
Apparently it was too far away. But mistaking your own country’s aircraft for the ememy should be a cause for concern.
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