A senior US army figure has apologised after an American patriot missile battery shot down an RAF Tornado jet on Sunday, killing the pilot and navigator.
Colonel Tim Blaeser, the US army chief responsible for patriot missiles in Kuwait, apologised to the two men's detachment commander at Ali Al Salem air base in Northern Kuwait.
The pair, who have not been named, were experienced airmen in their 30s and had been returning from a successful strike mission in the Baghdad area.
Staff at the airbase are still reflecting on their loss and there is still a lot of anger over this blue on blue strike, or so-called friendly fire accident.
DOWNED TORNADO What could have gone wrong? 
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Colonel Blaeser assured Group Captain Simon Dobb that measures had been put in place to prevent such an accident happening again.
More information on precisely what measures have been implemented was withheld for operational reasons.
He also shed more light on the sequence of events that led up to the appalling blunder.
It appears the Tornado GR4, flying as part of a pair, was mistakenly identified as an anti-radiation missile.
A patriot missile battery was fired from the ground but evasive action would have been impossible for the jet and it was brought down.
The pilot of the jet in front saw the patriot flying overhead and tried to sound an alert but it was once he had landed safely that he realised his colleague had been struck.
The awful irony that is the same type of patriot missile battery that has protected the Ali Al Salem airbase from enemy attack.
Group Captain Dobb has accepted the American gesture of sorrow and regret and said the accident could not have been foreseen.
A board of enquiry is in the process of being set up and the flight papers have been quarantined for use as evidence. Colonel Blaeser's apology came as Prime Minister Tony Blair told parliament there were "bound to be difficult days ahead" in the war.
He added that "the strategy and its timing are proceeding according to plan".
Seventeen British military personnel have been killed in the conflict so far.
On Monday, the first British soldier was killed in combat action in al-Zubayr, to the south of Basra, in southern Iraq.
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