BY : Daily Mail

Italian fighters were scrambled yesterday after an RAF transport plane apparently triggered a terror alert.

The C-130 Hercules flew over Rome but failed to respond to repeated efforts to make radio contact after it appeared to veer off course.

The Italian F-16 jets roared into the sky, prepared to shoot the aircraft down.t was identified as friendly only when the fighters made visual contact and communications were established.

The drama lasted almost half an hour and the Hercules was intercepted 250 miles south of the capital near Reggio Calabria.

The F-16s flew from a base at Trapani on Sicily and confirmed with the RAF pilot that all was OK and the plane, from RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire was allowed to continue on to Cyprus.

An Italian airforce spokesman said: 'We reacted as we always do to incidents of unidentified planes and scrambled two F-16s which are on constant standby.

'This is the sixth time this year that we have had an alert like this and shows how ready we are at dealing with these situations.

The previous cases were all similar in that the planes diverted from their planned route for no motive and then failed to respond to radio contact.'