LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan_A plane carrying U.S. drug enforcement officials narrowly missed a truck as it came in to land at a southern Afghan airport Monday, but overran the airstrip and slid headlong into a nearby nomad settlement, killing four people. At least 13 others were injured, including several American passengers, after the Russian-made, twin-engine An-32 aircraft slammed into a cluster of tents and mud brick houses where some 20 women and children ate rice near the airstrip at Bost airport in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province.Two of the 16 people on board the plane — 12 passengers and four crew — were killed, said Canadian military spokesman Maj. Quentin Innis without identifying the dead further. Eight others were wounded and flown by military helicopters to a U.S.-led coalition hospital in Kandahar, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) to the east. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the two dead on the plane were Ukrainian flight crew members.
| I hate to sound unsympathetic, but flying on aircraft crewed by Ukes is in the same category as playing with mortar shells your cow found. |