Aljazeera | Jul,21 2013
Two US fighter jets dropped unarmed bombs off of Australia’s coast during a war games training exercise that went wrong.
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system
Australians and environmentalists have reacted furiously to the news that two US fighter jets dropped four unarmed bombs on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park during war games.
The two Harrier jets launched from aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard each jettisoned an inert bomb and an unarmed explosive bomb in the World Heritage-listed marine park on Tuesday when a training exercise went wrong, the US 7th Fleet said in a statement on Saturday.
Australian Senator, Larissa Waters, the Greens party’s spokeswoman on the Great Barrier Reef, described the dumping of bombs in such an environmentally sensitive area as outrageous and said it should not be allowed.
“Have we gone completely mad?” she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “Is this how we look after our World Heritage area now? Letting a foreign power drop bombs on it?”.
None of the bombs exploded when they were dropped into more than 50 metres of water. They were dropped away from the coral reef to minimise damage, the statement said.
The pilots conducted the emergency jettison of the bombs, weighing a total of 1.8 metric tonnes, because they were low on fuel and could not land with their bomb load, the US Navy said.
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