U.S. Jets Evade Iraqi Missiles, Knock Out Site

In what the Pentagon called one of the most serious skirmishes since President Clinton took office, U.S. aircraft knocked out an Iraqi missile site Thursday after American pilots reported two missiles fired at them.

The two U.S. aircraft, which had been on routine patrol over northern Iraq, took evasive action, then engaged in a series of retaliatory strikes. Pentagon officials said that cluster and laser-guided bombs damaged four Iraqi SA-3 missile launch assemblies and radar equipment.

The Iraqi attack marked a new level of aggression against U.S. forces since Clinton assumed office in January, Pentagon officials said.

“This was the first time these particular types of missiles have been launched, and the first time two missiles have been fired at us at once,” said Defense Department spokesman Mike Thurwanger. “And in the past we always have been able to pick up the missiles on guidance radar first. But not this time.”

At a briefing Thursday afternoon, Pentagon spokeswoman Kathleen M. deLaski said “this is among the most serious” actions by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s military over the last eight months. Iraq has threatened U.S. aircraft on 20 occasions this year.

“Whether this is part of a new push by Saddam Hussein, you’d have to ask him that,” DeLaski said. “It’s hard to tell.”

U.S. pilots in a two-plane team composed of an F-4G Wild Weasel and an F-16C Falcon were flying a routine monitoring mission when they observed two missiles launched from the Iraqi battery, about 10 miles west of Mosul, DeLaski said. She was unable to say how close the missiles came to the U.S. planes.

The F-16C dropped cluster bombs on the site. A second team flew by the area about eight minutes later and, DeLaski said, dropped another set of cluster bombs when they, too, became “concerned for their safety.”

An hour after the Iraqi surface-to-air missiles were first spotted, she added, two F-15Es fighters were dispatched from their base in Turkey, and they dropped four laser-guided bombs on the site.

On numerous occasions since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraq has threatened U.S. aircraft by “painting” them with radar designed to guide missiles to their targets. U.S. officials have warned Iraq repeatedly that they consider such actions hostile, even if no weapons are fired, and the United States at times has responded with bombs and missiles.

In this instance, DeLaski said, the pilots made a “visual observance” of the missiles. “The feeling was that they were still a threat and that action needed to be taken,” she said.

The hostilities occurred west of Mosul, in an area of northern Iraq where U.S., French and British forces are enforcing a “no-fly” zone to protect the Kurd minority from attacks by the Iraqi military.

There have been a number of U.S. retaliatory strikes against Iraq in recent months, highlighted by the bombing in June of Baghdad’s intelligence center in response to an abortive Iraqi plot to assassinate former President Bush.

Asked if the Iraqi missile launches could be tests to gauge Clinton’s resolve, DeLaski responded: “Could this particular incident be more politically motivated than militarily related? I can’t answer that. That’s something you’d have to get from the Iraqis. I wouldn’t want to wade into that.”

Although DeLaski said the missile site was “effectively neutralized” by the U.S. response, she had no information on Iraqi casualties. Iraq claimed that one soldier and a civilian were wounded.

“We don’t know enough about what happened on the ground to determine whether this is part of something larger than an isolated incident,” DeLaski said.

“The incidents over the past months,” she added, “have been different enough in nature and with enough period of time between them that they don’t lead us to think that there’s something necessarily brewing in a large way this week, for instance.

“But we still take it very seriously, and that is in part why their response came in almost real time”--immediately after the U.S. pilots spotted the missiles.

Iraqi officials, in a statement released in Baghdad, admitted directing antiaircraft fire at the U.S. planes, but said they did so only in response to three attacks from the Americans. They added that the U.S. planes “were driven away.”

“This American claim (that Iraq fired first) is a fabricated lie and has no grain of truth,” the Iraqis said.