Four of the six crew aboard a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed over western Iraq are confirmed dead, U.S. Central Command said.
The tanker crashed in an incident on Thursday involving another aircraft, which managed to land safely. The planes were operating as part of the U.S. military campaign against Iran.
¡°The circumstances of the incident are under investigation,¡± U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Friday. ¡°However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.¡±
The names of those killed are being withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified.
The KC-135 normally has a crew of three ¡ª two pilots and a refueling boom operator ¡ª but sometimes includes a backup team if it¡¯s on a long flight. The aircraft have not carried bailout gear such as parachutes for their crews in almost 20 years, as the equipment was deemed to be unnecessary weight.
CBS News reported Thursday night that the second plane involved in the incident was also a KC-135 and that it landed in Israel. Unconfirmed images circulating online Friday showed a KC-135 parked at an airfield with a partially severed vertical rudder and stabilizer. It isn¡¯t known whether this aircraft was involved in the fatal incident.
As of earlier Thursday, the Pentagon had reported that seven U.S. service members had been killed since the war began on Feb. 28. In the first days of the conflict, three U.S. fighter jets crashed in Kuwait after accidentally coming under fire by the country¡¯s air defense forces. All six crew members ejected safely, officials said.
The Boeing Co. KC-135 Stratotanker ¡°provides the core aerial refueling capability for the United States Air Force and has excelled in this role for more than 60 years,¡± according to an Air Force web page. It also offers refueling for Navy and Marine Corps aircraft.
Based on the same airframe as the now-retired 707 passenger aircraft, more than 700 KC-135s were in service at the height of the Cold War. The U.S. military now operates about 350 of the four-engine units.
The plane is meant to be replaced by the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus, of which about 100 have been produced so far. The Pegasus has faced development problems and delays, including with the remote camera system for operating the plane¡¯s refueling boom.
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