Cuban government fighter planes shot down two small aircraft Saturday belonging to an exile group flying off the coast of Havana, officials said.
The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy were searching international waters for four people who were on board the Brothers to the Rescue planes, said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Mark Woodring. A third plane in the group was not hit and returned safely to Miami.Officials said there was no debris or signs of survivors.
"Something very tragic, that we have dreaded for a long time, I believe happened today," said a tearful Jose Basulto, head of Brothers to the Rescue and the surviving pilot. "I feel we lost our first pilots."
President Clinton dispatched F-15 fighters to protect search and rescue operations. He demanded an immediate explanation from the Cuban government.
"I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms," Clinton said in Seattle.
There was no mention of the attack on Cuban newscasts.
It was not clear whether the three Cessna 337 Skymasters had flown over Cuban territory, and Clinton did not know the location of the planes when they were downed.
Basulto said none of the planes had violated Cuban airspace.
"We were all in international waters," he said. "I strongly believe that Cuban MiGs downed two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft in international waters."
Late Saturday, officials from U.S. Customs Service questioned Basulto and three other crew members at the group's headquarters at Opa-Locka Airport in Miami.
Basulto said he had given them tapes of the pilots' conversations with Cuban aviation authorities that show none of them were ever closer than 15 miles from the Havana coast.
But a Pentagon official, insisting on anonymity, said early indications suggested the planes may have been heading to Cuba to land, pick up people and fly them out of the country.
White House press secretary Mike McCurry said U.S. officials had been unaware that Cuba was the real destination of the planes.
"We would not have accepted flight plans indicating Cuba as a destination," McCurry said.
Pilots from Brothers to the Rescue dropped leaflets over Havana last July and again in January urging peaceful protest to the communist regime of President Fidel Castro.
Basulto was under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration for violating Cuban airspace in the previous flyovers. The case is still pending.
After the July 13 flyover, Castro warned that any aircraft that violated Cuban airspace risked being shot down.
The search area was in international seas, 8 miles north of the 12 miles of water that Cuba claims as its own, said Coast Guard Petty Officer David French. The first Coast Guard jet on the scene reported seeing two oil slicks in the area.
Every Saturday, Brothers to the Rescue flies to the Bahamas to drop supplies to refugees staying in camps. The group of mostly older Cuban exiles also makes routine flights over the Straits of Florida, which separate Florida and Cuba, in search of rafters who have fled.
Bahamian officials refused to give the group permission for Saturday's mission because Cuban officials were visiting the camps, Basulto said. Instead, the planes flew over the Straits.
Basulto identified the missing four as Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Pena, Pablo Morales and Carlos Costas.