US Navy kills five in mistake bombing

A US Navy plane has accidentally dropped some form of munitions on a bombing range in Kuwait, killing five people.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says there has been a training accident and that there are casualties.

Other officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say five had been killed, including four Americans. The nationality of the fifth is not immediately known.

The accident happened at the Udari bombing range in Kuwait.

The United States military has operated regularly from airfields and an Army base in Kuwait since the 1991 Gulf War, when U.S. forces expelled the occupying Iraqi army from the small Gulf nation.

In Kuwait, a Kuwaiti military source said that the accident happened in the evening during the joint exercises at the range in north-western Kuwait, about 45 kilometres from the Iraqi border.

"One of the planes hit a group of soldiers by mistake," a Kuwaiti military source said.