U.S. Jet Targeted by Iraq in ‘No-Fly’ Zone Fires Missile

A U.S. F-16 fighter jet opened fire at an antiaircraft missile site in northern Iraq on Thursday, apparently hitting the battery’s radar in the latest military confrontation with Baghdad, the Pentagon said.

“The radar stopped beaming at precisely the time the [missile] was to impact the radar, so we assume that it was a hit,” Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon told reporters Thursday.

He said the battery targeted U.S. jets but did not fire.

The F-16 and another U.S. jet in the area returned safely from a Western-imposed “no-fly” zone over northern Iraq to their base at Incirlik, Turkey, after the incident about 20 miles northwest of the Iraqi city of Mosul, Bacon said.

It was Baghdad’s fourth confrontation in 11 days with U.S. and British forces patrolling the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq. The zones were established after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to protect Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from attacks by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces.

Those confrontations have been increasing since the U.S. and Britain launched military strikes Dec. 16-19 after Baghdad refused to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.

Bacon said dozens of incursions by Iraqi jets into the no-fly zones in recent weeks were “militarily insignificant” and stressed that Hussein had no control over 60% of his country’s airspace.

The incursions “are basically cheat-and-retreat actions. They are timid,” Bacon said.

He told reporters that two aging Iraqi MIG-21 jets flew into the southern no-fly zone for four minutes and 12 minutes respectively Thursday and then fled to avoid being attacked.

Bacon refused to respond directly to questions on whether the U.S. military might strike at Iraqi airfields to halt the incursions into the zones.

Meanwhile, Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of the U.S. forces in the Mideast, told reporters Thursday that he believed the Iraqis were seriously trying to hit a U.S. aircraft.

“These attempts, we feel, are real attempts to get a plane,” he said at a news conference.

Zinni said the incidents with Iraq in the no-fly zone were “increasing in size and scope.”