Coalition Forces Bomb Targets in Southern Iraq

Eight people were killed and nine were wounded Sunday when Western coalition planes bombed targets in southern Iraq, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

Britain and the United States said coalition planes attacked Iraqi radar after aircraft had come under threat. A British Defense Ministry spokesman declined to say whether British or U.S. aircraft--or both--were involved.

Iraq said U.S. and British planes flew 35 sorties using air bases in Kuwait.

“The enemy attacked civilian and service installations in Basra province, killing eight people and wounding nine others,” the spokesman said. It was not clear who the victims were.

Iraq’s ground air defenses fired at the planes, the spokesman added.

U.S. Central Command headquarters in Florida said in a statement that in response to recent Iraqi hostile acts, “coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons today to strike two air defense radar systems” near the city of Basra, which is 275 miles southeast of Baghdad.

“Coalition aircraft never target civilian populations or infrastructures and go to painstaking lengths to avoid injury to civilians,” the U.S. said, adding that damage assessment was still going on.

U.S. and British pilots are policing two “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The zones, which Baghdad does not recognize, were imposed to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from any air attacks by the Iraqi government.