Israelis may have killed Soviet team in Lebanon

Israeli pilots, in an effort to protect the technological secrets of an F-4 fighter shot down in the Lebanon conflict, wiped out a team of Soviet experts who were trying to examine the wreckage, a senior United States official said Wednesday.

The official, who declined to be named, said he did not know how many Soviet experts were killed last summer when the Israeli Air Force launched the air strike. Other reports said there may have been 11 victims. The official was in Brussels to attend a meeting of NATO defense ministers.