Local authority officials and residents of the northern Italian town of Cavalese last night accused US Marine forces of reckless behaviour following an accident in which 20 people lost their lives.
The accident occurred when a US military jet clipped a cablecar line at the ski resort of Cermis, close to Cavalese in the Dolomites.
Italian state television last night reported that, while all the dead had not yet been identified, among the victims were German, Polish and Hungarian tourists, as well as one Italian, a locally-based cablecar attendant who had stepped in to do the job for just one afternoon as a favour to a friend.
The accident happened at about 3 p.m yesterday when a US fourseater surveillance aircraft, an EA6B jet, sliced through a cablecar line, leaving the car without support and sending it crashing to the ground from over 650 ft.
The effect of the cablecar's impact on the ground was considerably worsened by the weight of the heavy transport hooking mechanism on its roof.
A second cabin was left dangling from the cable. Its sole occupant was later rescued suffering from shock.
Italian television last night carried footage of the yellow cablecar, almost totally flattened by the impact of the crash, and a trail of blood in the snow-covered Dolomite hillside.
A spokesman at the US military base of Aviano, north-east Italy, said last night the aircraft had been assigned to the NATO-led SFOR stabilisation force in Bosnia. It had been on a low altitude training mission yesterday.
The pilot was later reported to have made an emergency landing at Aviano after reporting problems, presumably provoked by the collision with the cablecar wire.
Speaking on Italian television last night, local residents and officials complained bitterly that such an accident had become "inevitable" - given the US military's practice of low flying in the Cermis valley.
A Trento regional authority official, Mr Carlo Ancelotti, said: "This was a tragedy just waiting to happen; one we have been frightened would happen. Both the province and Cavalese town council have repeatedly and regularly complained about the danger of these military flights.
"Some of these planes even amuse themselves by flying in below the cablecar lines."
He continued: "We were told the pilots were highly capable and the planes technologically advanced, but that did not reassure everyone and, unfortunately, the accident that we have all been predicting happened today."
As Alpine rescue teams, supported by military helicopters, were recovering the victims' bodies last night, the memories of local residents flashed back to March 9th, 1976, when 42 people were killed in a cablecar crash in the same valley.
On that occasion, only one of the cablecar occupants survived, a 14-year-old girl whose body was largely cushioned on impact by the other passengers. An inquest into that accident found that two cablecar wires had crossed and that an automatic safety system which might have prevented the disaster had been switched off to speed up the cablecar's journey.
In July 1987, a light aircraft sliced through a cablecar wire in the Falzarego pass in the Dolomites, leaving a car suspended in the air but causing no injuries to 25 passengers.
Following yesterday's tragedy, the Italian judiciary and US military officials are to hold inquiries.
AFP adds: The commander of the US airbase at Aviano, Gen Timothy A. Peppe, last night suspended all low altitude flights by US military aircraft until the causes of the accident were determined.