Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990 TAG: 9006200094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams also raised the possibility that another 21 U.S. servicemen might have been wounded by a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship, and that if the incident occurred, it may have been captured on the plane's video camera.
Williams said it is presently "impossible to distinguish" whether the 21 were injured by the gunship or from mortar fire of Panamanian Defense Forces during the Dec. 20 military operation.
In his statement, Williams said the Pentagon stood by its initial count that two - and perhaps three - U.S. servicemen had been killed by friendly fire.
The Pentagon has refused to identify which of the 23 servicemen killed in Panama died under such circumstances.
On Monday, the department had said 19 of some 324 soldiers wounded in action had been hit accidentally by their comrades. The figures issued Tuesday changed both the number hit by friendly fire and the total number of wounded.
Williams said the department had refined the figures in an overnight study of the death reports.
The review was prompted by a Newsweek magazine report that nine U.S. soldiers had been killed by their comrades and that more than 60 percent of the woundings had been caused by friendly fire.
Williams also disputed the article's contention that there were more than a dozen "leaks" about the military operation.
In his first comment on the issue, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney lamented the deaths by friendly fire, saying such things occur in complex, night-time military operations where high-tech weaponry is used.
by CNB