Iraq Claims 8 Die in Airstrike

Sun Aug 25, 8:15 PM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S.-British air raid in southern Iraq left eight civilians dead and nine wounded, the Iraqi military said Sunday.

The military told the official Iraqi News Agency that the warplanes bombed areas in Basra province, 330 miles south of Baghdad.

The U.S. Central Command in Florida said coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons to strike two air defense radar systems near Basra "in response to recent Iraqi hostile acts against coalition aircraft monitoring the Southern No-Fly Zone."

It said there have been more than 120 separate incidents of Iraqi surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery fire directed against coalition aircraft this year, the most recent on Aug. 20.

The Iraq report didn't provide further details about the casualties. U.S. officials have said they have no way of confirming or denying Iraqi claims of causalities but that coalition aircraft "never target civilian populations or infrastructure and go to painstaking lengths to avoid injury to civilians and damage to civilian facilities."

The attacks came as Washington weighs options to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites). Iraqi opposition leaders are meeting in London to discuss their role in any bid to oust Saddam.

U.S. and British warplanes monitoring "no fly" zones over southern and northern Iraq regularly attack Iraqi military facilities. The zones were established shortly after the 1991 Gulf War ( news - web sites) to protect Kurdish and Shiite Muslim groups.

Iraq frequently tries to shoot down allied planes as it considers the zones violations of Iraqi sovereignty.

-- (satan is @ alive. and well), August 26, 2002

Answers

Disgusting. The little manchild on a power trip seems to think that using real military weapons is no different than when he used to play with his plastic airplanes and GI Joes when he was a younger imbecile.

-- (Dumbya @ psychotic. manchild), August 26, 2002.