Canada Divided Opinion

Three years ago, a chartered DC-8 carrying home 248 U.S. soldiers from peacekeeping duty in Egypt crashed on takeoff after refueling in Newfoundland. All 248 died, as did eight crew members. In a long-awaited final report on the disaster, the Canadian Aviation Safety Board last week said, as expected, that the probable cause of the crash was icing: a sandpaper-thin coating on the wings that diminished their ability to lift the aircraft.

But the official report may not be the last word on what brought down the "Screaming Eagles" of the 101st Airborne Division. Four of the board's nine members blame a suspected explosion for the tragedy and indirectly raise a chilling question: Were the American peacekeepers victims of a terrorist plot?

In their minority report, the dissenters piece together this chain of events: explosions aboard the aircraft ignited an in-flight fire that may have caused system failures and a crash. As evidence, they point to a pathologist's report that found combustion residues in the lungs of more than 70 of the victims, indicating there was a fire in the plane before the final impact killed all the passengers. They cite eyewitness accounts from two truck drivers who saw a yellow glow under the belly of the crippled DC-8 as it plunged to earth. The four also charge that the safety board botched the crash investigation and ignored or suppressed crucial evidence.

The dissenters did not say whether they thought the soldiers' own ammunition had exploded -- or some Middle East terrorist group had planted a bomb aboard the DC-8. The official report counters some of these claims with its own scientific analysis but leaves many questions unanswered. The bitter split on the safety board has raised eyebrows in Ottawa, and two opposition Members of Parliament have called for a judicial inquiry into the tragedy.