The World : DEA Agent Killed in Crash

A small U.S. plane used in the anti-drug effort in Peru crashed in the Andes mountains, killing the six Americans and three Peruvians aboard, officials said. U.S. Embassy spokesman Charles Loveridge said the plane went down Saturday, after it left the town of Tingo Maria. The dead Americans included Drug Enforcement Administration agent Rick Finley, 36, of Ft. Knox, Ky., two helicopter pilots, the plane’s pilot, a mechanic and an embassy security officer. The Peruvians included a police captain, the son of a police commander and the chief of the U.S.-funded coca eradication program. The cause of the crash, in the Upper Huallaga valley region notorious as a source of the coca leaf, was not known.