Iraqi TV Wednesday evening showed the wreckage of the U.S. spy plane shot down by Iraqi air defense artillery earlier in the day.

The state-run TV showed footage of the downed spy plane, broken into several parts in an unknown location, with clear English words such as "property of U.S.A.F."

This was the third U.S. spy plane that has been shot down by Iraqi air defense forces within three months, the report said, adding that the other two U.S. spy planes were downed on August 27 and September 11 respectively.

Earlier, the Iraqi TV said that at 12:42 local time (0942 GMT), Iraq anti-aircraft fire shot down a U.S. spy plane over southern Iraq.

The Pentagon has admitted that an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft of the U.S. Air Force was missing in southern Iraq on Wednesday.

"We do have a Predator missing," a Pentagon official said, referring to the remote-controlled flying vehicle used for aerial reconnaissance.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned recently that Iraq's air defense capabilities have improved both "qualitatively and quantitatively," while Iraq has vowed to upgrade its air defense system to shoot down more coalition planes monitoring the two no-fly zones in the country.

The no-fly zones were set up in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War by the U.S.-led Western coalition with the claimed aim of protecting the Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from the persecution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Iraq has never recognized the air exclusion zones and has regularly fired missiles at the U.S. and British planes enforcing them.

( Xinhua News Agency 10/11/2001)