SEOUL: South Korea\u2019s Air Force said Thursday that one of its fighter jets had accidentally dropped eight bombs in the wrong place during a training exercise, resulting in civilian injuries.
\n\u201cEight MK-82 general-purpose bombs were abnormally released from an Air Force KF-16 aircraft, landing outside the designated firing range,\u201d the Air Force said.
\nThe incident occurred around 10:00 a.m. in Pocheon, around 25 kilometers south of the heavily fortified border with the nuclear-armed North.
\n\u201cWe deeply regret the unintended release of the bombs, which resulted in civilian casualties, and wish those injured a swift recovery,\u201d the Air Force said in a statement.
\nIt said it had established an accident response committee to investigate the incident, and said it would \u201ctake all necessary measures, including compensation for damages.\u201d
\nThe Air Force said the military jet had been \u201cparticipating in a joint live-fire exercise involving both the Air Force and Army.\u201d
\nSouth Korea was holding combined live-fire drills with the United States Thursday in Pocheon, the Yonhap news agency reported.
\nSouth Korea\u2019s National Fire Agency said that the bombs were \u201cpresumed to have fallen on a village during a South Korea-US joint exercise.\u201d
\nThis resulted in \u201ccasualties and property damage, with many displaced residents,\u201d it said, adding that four people had been seriously injured and three suffered minor injuries.
\nOne church building and sections of two houses were damaged, according to the statement.
\nJoint South Korea-US \u201cFreedom Shield\u201d military exercises, one of the security allies\u2019 largest annual joint exercises, are set to begin later this month.
\nThe two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
\nThe United States stations tens of thousands of soldiers in the South, in part to protect Seoul against Pyongyang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL: South Korea\u2019s Air Force said Thursday that one of its fighter jets had accidentally dropped eight bombs in the wrong place during a training exercise, resulting in civilian injuries. \u201cEight MK-82 general-purpose bombs were abnormally released from an Air Force KF-16 aircraft, landing outside the designated firing range,\u201d the Air Force said. The incident …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78026,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78005\/revisions\/78026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}