Libya's official media said Saturday the "terrorist West" may have caused the crash of a Libyan Arab Airlines plane in which 150 people were killed.
The official Libyan news agency JANA said Tuesday's crash of the Boeing 727 near Tripoli may have been set up as revenge for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.The Libyan plane, flight 1103, went down a day after the fourth anniversary of the bombing of the Pan Am jumbo jet in which 270 people were killed.
Libyan Arab Airlines has flown only domestic flights since April, when the United Nations imposed an air blockade as part of a package to punish Libya for refusing to hand over two men accused of planting explosives aboard the Pan Am plane.
Residents in Tripoli said the Libyan plane apparently collided with a military aircraft. Libyan authorities have said only that investigations were under way.
But Al Jamahiriya newspaper, an organ of the revolutionary committees known to reflect Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi's views, wrote Saturday: "The libyan passenger plane crash is one of the abominable crimes of the terrorist West."
It said there were indications the "downing of the plane was the result of a ploy by Western hands . . . it is certain the investigation will define that more precisely."