Indian Navy Jets Collide

Two Indian navy planes collided as they flew in formation over Goa in western India on Tuesday and all 12 crewmen were believed killed, as well as three people on the ground, police said.

One plane fell onto a house under construction in a residential area, and the other crashed into a field near a road, said Karnal Singh, the general inspector of police for the state of Goa, a tourist mecca on the Arabian Sea.

The planes carried six crewmembers each and all were believed killed, said Singh. He said three civilians were killed, at least one of them a laborer working on the two-story house when the plane smashed into the ground floor. Eight other construction workers were injured, three of them seriously, he said.

"It was a collision between IL-38 planes flying parallel to each other. Their wings collided," Singh said. "One crashed on a house under construction and one crashed near the road" in a residential area called Vasco, a little over a mile east of a naval base.

Firefighters sprayed water at plumes of smoke, but there were no flames, as navy and air force rescue crews helped search for survivors, said Anant Salkar, a reporter at the scene from Tarun Bharat newspaper.

"The plane is sitting in its upright position next to the building but the cockpit is missing," Salkar said by telephone. "No other houses have been damaged but the plane must have hit a high-tension wire electrical tower nearby, because the top of it has fallen down and is lying with debris from the plane."

Salkar said all those in the house were construction laborers, completing their work before a housewarming, scheduled on Oct. 5.

Police were alerted to the crash by a police officer's wife, who was driving by the area when one of the planes whizzed over her car before crashing, Singh said.

"They were big planes. They carry about 38 passengers," said Squadron Leader R.K. Dhingra, an air force spokesman in New Delhi. "There were six people on each of the crafts."

He said the Russian-made Ilyushin-38 transporters, which are turboprop aircraft sometimes used for maritime reconnaissance, were practicing for celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the naval air squadron in Goa.

An official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the planes in the collision were not connected with U.S.-India naval warfare exercises, taking place in the Indian Ocean.

By Laurinda Keys