Iraqis Fire on 2 U.S. Combat Planes : Military: No damage is reported on reconnaissance mission. There reportedly have been 5 such attacks.

Iraqi gunners fired antiaircraft bursts at two U.S. Navy combat planes in separate incidents over northern Iraq, the U.S. military announced Wednesday. It was the first such reported action against the U.S.-led military forces carving out a haven for Kurdish refugees near the Iraqi-Turkish frontier.

The two A-6 Intruders, which were flying together on a routine reconnaissance mission, were reported not damaged and did not return fire. After completing their mission, the bombers returned to the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, stationed in the Mediterranean off the coast of Turkey. (There were some reports that only one plane may have been involved in both incidents.)

The attacks occurred 20 minutes apart Tuesday evening, the first about 20 miles north of the town of Mosul, the second a few miles northwest of the town of Dahuk, Col. Don Kirchoffner, a U.S. military spokesman, said in Cizre, near the Iraqi-Turkish border. Both locations are outside the 120-mile-wide, 30-mile-deep security zone the allies have established as a refuge for hundreds of thousands of refugees, most of them Kurds, who have fled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s regime. But they are above the 36th Parallel, where the allies have drawn a line beyond which they do not allow flights by Iraqi aircraft.

“We’re treating it (the attacks) like they didn’t yet get the message that the war was over,” Kirchoffner said. “It’s like the Japanese sitting out there for years after the Second World War.”

Other U.S. officials said that earlier such attacks have gone unreported. According to one source, there now have been five such incidents since the allies began operating in northern Iraq last month to help the Kurds.

The Iraqi government denied that its forces had fired on any U.S. planes. The American military command said reconnaissance flights over northern Iraq will continue.

Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on Wednesday that the United States has not yet formulated any response to the attacks. “We’ve asked for more information,” he said.

Williams refused to say whether U.S. planes fired upon in that area are permitted to fire back without seeking higher authorization. But he said the United States has clearly signaled to Iraq that American forces “will take the necessary means” to defend themselves.

Masses of Kurdish refugees, meanwhile, continued to come down from their bleak mountain encampments on the Iraqi-Turkish border, many of them crowding into a refugee camp built by the allied coalition near the northern Iraqi town of Zakhu. U.S. diplomats said that many of the new arrivals seem to be waiting for the allies to take over the now-deserted northwestern Iraqi regional capital of Dahuk, but troops poised near the town have received no orders to move in.

There are conflicting reports of the numbers of refugees returning, but most sources say 60,000 have gone back to Iraq, leaving more than 300,000 in a dozen camps in the mountains. More than 1 million refugees remain in Iran, with another estimated half a million on the Iran-Iraq border.

In other developments:

* Iraq freed three CBS television technicians who had been captured four days before by troops in southern Iraq, wire services reported from Baghdad. Americans Bud Mills and Barry Severson and Briton Richard Parrott told Western reporters that they had been interrogated but treated well. Iraqi Information Ministry officials said the three are expected to leave soon for Jordan by road.

CBS said they drove into Iraq from Kuwait on Saturday and were not on a reporting assignment. Mills said Iraqi troops stopped them at a checkpoint near the southern town of Safwan.

* Mohammed Mashat, who was Iraq’s ambassador to the United States in the prelude to the Gulf War, has requested and been granted permanent resident status in Canada, wire services quoted officials in Ottawa as saying. A Canadian spokesman said Mashat was unhappy with the Baghdad regime and feared for his life.

An Iraqi dissident, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the former ambassador had been hiding out in Toronto for several days. The dissident said Mashat fell out of favor with Hussein during the Gulf crisis and would probably be killed if he ever returned to Iraq.

* The last American troops rumbled out of southern Iraq, the Associated Press reported from the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. Elements of the 3rd Armored Division headed for outposts in northern Kuwait, where they will wait for orders to return home.

The 5,000 troops of the 3rd Armored Division had been providing food and protection for refugees. The U.S. forces have been replaced by a 38-nation U.N. peacekeeping force.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy in Manama, Bahrain, contributed to this story.

U.S. Planes Under Fire

* Two U.S. Navy A-6 combat planes came under antiaircraft fire twice over northern Iraq, but neither was hit. The U.S. military blamed Iraqi gunners for the incidents, which occurred 20 miles north of Mosul and a few miles west of Dahuk.

* It was the first time allied aircraft were reported attacked during the military operation to aid and repatriate hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees.