9:00 am
KUWAIT - A US-led military team has ended its probe into an accidental air raid which killed New Zealand soldier John McNutt and five United States servicemen in Kuwait a month ago.
Kuwait's Defence Minister, Sheikh Jaber al-Hamad al-Sabah, was quoted by the official news agency KUNA as saying the
team had ended its investigation, but he declined to give any details about its findings.
The US embassy has said it expects the team to hand in its official report by Tuesday.
The incident resulted from a US jet dropping two 225-kg bombs onto an observation post during a military exercise by Western troops at the Udairi range in northwest Kuwait, killing the soldiers and wounding seven people.
It was not clear if the jet, an F/A-18 Hornet flown by a veteran pilot, had missed its target or was wrongly directed by a ground team.
Major McNutt, a 27-year-old high-flyer in the SAS, had been New Zealand's sole military representative in Kuwait at the time of the accident.
He had been a staff officer at the Coalition Joint Taskforce headquarters - a joint mission in Kuwait also involving the US, Britain and Australia.
The Udairi range lies just south of Kuwait's border with Iraq. Kuwaiti, US and British forces regularly use it for live-fire exercises.
The United States and Britain also have air force units in Kuwait which run almost daily patrols over southern Iraq.
Major McNutt was given a military funeral, attended by an honour guard of US military personnel and the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jim Anderton, at the Burnham Military Camp in Christchurch on March 20.
- REUTERS and HERALD ONLINE STAFF
Call to abort bombing run too late
