Apr 12, 2007, 16:31 GMT
Berlin - A German air force Tornado warplane crashed in the Swiss Alps on Thursday and one of the two crewmen was missing, an armed forces spokesman in Berlin said.
The other crewman was alive and had been taken to hospital. A search for the missing man was under way.
Swiss television reports said the jet was flying from Corsica to Germany on a training flight and had just taken off, after refuelling near the Swiss city of Lucerne, when it crashed in the canton of Berne.
An eyewitness told the SDA news agency of Switzerland he had seen the jet not long before the crash, as it flew low up a narrow Alpine valley and pulled up hard to cross a mountain, but he had not seen or heard the crash.
Germany last week sent six Tornado reconnaissance planes to Afghanistan to help NATO-led forces fighting the Taliban. The defence ministry said the crashed Tornado did not come from the squadron charged with the Afghan mission.