French military jets cut off village’s power supply by flying low
The incident happened on Wednesday afternoon in the small village of Le Castellet, near Manosque.
The two Rafale aircraft had taken off from a nearby air base on a low-altitude training flight, reports say.
An investigation has been opened into the “rare incident”.
“It went so low that it made a hell of a din, I then looked up and saw the second aircraft,” the village’s mayor told local news outlet France Bleu (in French).
“It was so low that I said to myself: it went under the power lines,” Benoît Gouin, who was driving at the time, said.
The fall of the cables caused a fire which was quickly brought under control, La Provence newspaper reports.
The village remained without power for a few hours, while the access road to it was also barred for security reasons.
“There were no casualties. This in-flight incident forced the pilot of the aircraft to land safely at 14:11 [13:11 GMT]” at the Orange air base, a French air force spokesperson told La Provence newspaper. They “deplore this extremely rare incident”.
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