JODHPUR: A Russian-made Indian fighter jet crashed in western India on Friday, injuring seven people on the ground, after the pilot bailed out safely, police said. The MiG-27 pilot ejected over a village in Rajasthan state but seven members of a family working in a field were injured by falling debris, police superintendent Sharad Kaviraj told foreign news agency. The plane was on a routine sortie when it went down in the village of Salawas, 42 kilometers (26 miles) from the city of Jodhpur, he said. The Indian air force, the world's fourth largest, has been plagued by crashes, particularly of its Russian-made MiGs.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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