French ballistic missile self-destructs during test

"A French M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile has self-destructed during testing off the coast of Brittany. He said the missile "self-destructed during its first propulsion phase... for an unknown reason." Witnesses told AFP they heard a loud explosion and saw trails of smoke when the missile test failed. "We saw flashes in the sky, I thought it was a plane exploding," Claude Jean, a resident of Cap Sizun on the northern end of the bay, told AFP."

[link to www.thelocal.fr]