A South African air force pilot who was parachuting down after his fighter crashed in eastern South Africa Wednesday was killed when he slammed into the windscreen of a truck driving along a highway, police said."The pilot hit the cab of the truck and was killed instantly," said police spokesman Mica Tlou.
"We identified the plane as an Impala which had a pilot and co-pilot on board. Both the pilots died," Senior Superintendent Tlou told AFP.
The second pilot in the Impala attack jet landed on a rocky patch of ground nearby, the police said.
Tlou said the Impala crashed a few metres (yards) away from the N4 highway between Nelspruit and Kaapmuiden in eastern Mpumalanga province, about 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Pretoria.
Another police spokesman, Captain Benjamin Bhembe, told the SAPA news agency: "The one who parachuted into the truck hit the windscreen of the vehicle before landing on the back. He apparently died on impact."
The glass of the windscreen cracked, slightly injuring a passenger in the truck, Bhembe added.
Tlou said police believed the fighter jet experienced engine trouble before it crashed, causing both pilots to eject.
He said aviation investigators were on their way to the scene, while the road, the main artery between South Africa and the Mozambican capital Maputo, had been closed to traffic.
The first Impala attack planes were built in South Africa in 1966 under licence from the Italian aerospace company Aermacchi. The South African fighter jets are named after a fleet-footed buck.
A single-seat version of the Impala was used extensively in attacks by the apartheid air force during its war in Namibia and Angola.
Aviation observers have expressed concern in recent years about its aging airframe and engines.
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