Iran fighters force US aircraft down: reports

TEHRAN:  Iranian fighter jets have forced an aircraft carrying US troops to land in Iran after it entered its air space without permission, the Fars news agency said on Tuesday.
 
"The plane had five soldiers and three civilians on board who were subjected to questioning," Fars said.

"After a day's interrogation, it emerged that the aircraft did not enter Iran intentionally and it was allowed to leave for Afghanistan."

State television said that the aircraft carrying the soldiers was a non-American civilian plane.

"This plane was not a military plane and did not belong to the United States," an unnamed official was quoted as saying by the website of the television's Arabic-language Al-Alam channel.

"But a few US military soldiers were in the plane," the official added.

The plane was forced to land in Iran on Sunday and allowed to fly to Afghanistan on Monday, the website added.

A spokeswoman for the US Fifth Fleet Lieutenant Stephanie Murdock told AFP by telephone from its base in Bahrain she had "no information right now" about the Iranian reports.

A Pentagon spokesman said none of its aircraft were missing.

In April 2007, Iran released 15 British sailors and marines whom it detained for almost two weeks saying their vessels had strayed into its waters on the maritime border with Iraq.