U.S., Allies Strike Iraqi Air Defenses in ‘No-Fly Zones’ : Persian Gulf: Military says attack blunts Iraq’s ability to threaten allied aircraft in south. Photos show nuclear fabricating plant was destroyed in raid Sunday.

The United States and its U.N. allies launched another limited air strike against Iraq on Monday as the Bush Administration sought to maintain pressure on the Iraqi regime in the final hours before Wednesday’s presidential inauguration.

The Pentagon said 69 allied aircraft, including British and French warplanes, knocked out Iraqi air defenses in the country’s northern and southern “no-fly zones,” and an American F-15 was believed to have shot down an Iraqi MIG-25 fighter that threatened it.

Military authorities said indications were that the unusual daylight operation destroyed enough targets to blunt Iraq’s ability to threaten allied aircraft in the south. “The Iraqi air defense capability in southern Iraq is now inoperable,” a senior military official said.

U.S. authorities also said satellite photos showed that the Sunday attack by 45 Tomahawk missiles against an Iraqi manufacturing installation had destroyed the main plant, blocking at least for now Iraq’s ability to produce nuclear weapons.

The Pentagon contends that the facility, which Iraq insists is an ordinary factory, is part of the Iraqi nuclear complex and would be certain to be put into service again, if the United Nations ever ends its required inspections of Iraqi weapons-producing facilities.

The latest round of incidents continued a two-week pattern of limited confrontation between the allies and Iraq over what the Western allies insist is Baghdad’s continued flouting of U.N. authority in the wake of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

In other developments Monday:

* In New York, the Security Council prepared to act today on a recommendation by U.N. peacekeeping authorities that it send 3,000 troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border to ensure that Baghdad respects the new boundary between the two countries.

The force would be in addition to 1,400 U.S. troops sent to Kuwait to help enforce the border. A U.N. commission has just marked a new boundary there, but Iraq has refused to recognize it as valid.

* Iraq reacted to the raids with outrage--and increasing defiance--with Hussein offering extra financial rewards to Iraqi gunners who shoot down U.S. missiles. Iraqi families on Monday buried their dead after Sunday night’s allied missile strike.

* Turkey voiced new fears about Iraq’s latest move to activate its antiaircraft missiles in the northern “no-fly” zone that borders Turkey, warning that Ankara may allow the allies to use the air base at Incirlik to attack Iraq if Baghdad does not back down.

* Russia distanced itself from the allied-launched bombing raids, calling for a new meeting of the Security Council to consider the Iraqi situation. “The situation around Iraq has come to a critical stage,” said Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev.

* Increasingly fearful of the prospect of Iraqi retaliation after the air strikes, Kuwait said Monday that it will ask Britain and France to station troops along the Kuwait-Iraq border. Western officials said that new Patriot air defense missiles will be sent to Kuwait.

* The Pentagon conceded that the explosion at the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad on Sunday was caused by a U.S. Tomahawk but said that the missile, still lodged in the hotel courtyard, was hit by Iraqi anti-aircraft fire and did not detonate. Only the Tomahawk’s fuel exploded.

Monday’s Air Strike

The latest air strike, the second in 24 hours launched from allied air bases in Saudi Arabia, targeted three air defense command centers and three mobile missile batteries that the allies had missed in a raid Jan. 13.

Although preliminary after-action reports almost always are sketchy, Pentagon officials said the allies severely damaged a radar-control center at Najaf, destroyed an air defense headquarters command at Tallil and obliterated an early-warning radar station at Samawah.

Military authorities said they were unable to destroy three mobile surface-to-air missiles because the Iraqis continued to move them around by truck, making them more difficult to find, and a strike against a fourth battery was canceled after it had been moved.

But the officials asserted that, without the sophisticated radar and command centers, the missiles no longer are operable. As a result, they said, Iraq has lost its air defense capability in the south, although the batteries remaining in the north still pose a threat.

Pentagon officials said the downing of the Iraqi plane occurred as allied aircraft were returning from the air strike against the missile installations and an Iraqi MIG-25 threatened an American F-15 flying at about 30,000 feet.

According to the Defense Department account, the American plane fired an advanced air-to-air missile at the Iraqi aircraft, then shot a Sidewinder air-to-air missile to follow up. Officials said the American pilot did not see the Iraqi jet go down, but believed it had.

U.S. officials said the incidents marked another day of confrontations in which Iraq deliberately sent its planes to penetrate the boundaries of the northern and southern no-fly zones--imposed to protect the Kurdish and Shiite Muslim minorities--and either shot at allied aircraft or locked on to them with radar.

They said that allied aircraft also destroyed the radar on an Iraqi SA-6 mobile missile installation in the country’s northern no-fly zone that had locked its radar on a French F-1 Mirage aircraft.

President Bush, returning from his last weekend at Camp David, Md., told reporters that the United States “did the right thing” in attacking the Iraqi air defense network Monday. “Let’s just hope that the message has been delivered loud and clear,” he said.

President-elect Bill Clinton again supported Bush’s action, saying his Administration “will not waver” from enforcing the U.N. demands.

Pentagon officials warned again that the allies will launch more raids, if Iraq does not immediately comply with U.N. demands that it allow unhindered access by its inspectors to key Iraqi sites and recognize the newly marked borders with Kuwait.

Nuclear Complex

The Pentagon said that Sunday’s attack on the Zaafaraniyah facility, about eight miles southeast of Baghdad damaged the huge, sprawling complex heavily enough to leave it unusable as a nuclear-weapons plant for the immediate future.

Authorities said 37 of 45 Tomahawk missiles, launched from four U.S. Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, hit buildings that were their intended targets, destroying the facility’s main production equipment.

They said that three other missiles landed short, blowing craters in an orchard about 200 yards from the nuclear weapons complex, while three others missed and hit a nearby retaining wall but did not explode. Another fell into the ocean.

Officials said there was no damage to homes adjacent to the Zaafaraniyah complex; the Iraqis deny that the installation is part of their nuclear weapons complex, but a U.N. weapons-inspection team said that it was, although other experts said that it had been mothballed.

Altering their assessment from earlier assertions, American officials conceded that one Tomahawk landed in the courtyard of the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, setting off an explosion that killed a receptionist and a female guest.

But the officials speculated that the Tomahawk may have been knocked off course after being hit by Iraqi antiaircraft fire and that the explosion most likely was caused by ignition of the missile’s fuel, not by any detonation of its 1,000-pound bomb warhead.

Military authorities said that the missile, which navigates by “reading” an electronic map of the area, was programmed on a route that took it over Baghdad because the region contained features of terrain that were easily recognizable electronically.

They said the Rashid, which is hosting an Islamic conference this week and has been home for many Western journalists who are covering the crisis from Baghdad, was not used either as a navigation checkpoint or as a target.

The Iraqi View

But the Iraqis called the Rashid incident was an intolerable attack against civilians; they also said the Zaafaraniyah attack had caused civilian casualties when a cruise missile fell in a neighborhood in the flight path between American ships and the Iraqi target.

Iraq contended that at least 40 Iraqis have died in the escalating confrontation with Washington--21 of them in the latest round of incidents. In a statement Monday night, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz called the strikes “a dirty game” by the Bush Administration.

But after a night of terror, the city returned to near-normal Monday. Workers returned to offices, shops reopened and residents settled in for what they hoped would be a lull in the confrontation.

An Iraqi military spokesman said Monday that Hussein had ordered that any soldier who manages to shoot down a Tomahawk cruise missile be given a reward of a half-million Iraqi dinars, the equivalent of at least 20 years’ pay.

Pine reported from Washington and Fineman from Baghdad. Times staff writers Kim Murphy in Kuwait city and Hugh Pope in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

Round 3 of Allied Attacks

For the third time in a week, allied forces have attacked Iraq. At approximately 1:30 a.m. PST U.S., British and French planes staged a restrike on missile and radar sites in the southern “no-fly zone” plus an air defense target in the northern zone.

Some allied planes involved in the raid: EF-111 (USA): Detects, sorts and identifies radars observing aircraft and jams them. Tornado (UK): British primary ground attack plane. F-15E Eagle (USA): Fighter-bomber, capable of carrying a heavy payload of bombs and missiles into enemy territory. E-3A Sentry AWACS (USA): Airborne Warning and Control System Mirage F-1 (France): Jet used by the French as an attack and interception weapon.