U.N. Arms Inspectors Search Iraqi Airfield

U.N. disarmament teams inspected a shabby, seldom-used airfield in corn country north of Baghdad on Sunday where Iraqi experts reportedly once tested a helicopter-mounted contraption that could bombard enemy troops with killer microbes.

The inspectors checked on equipment sealed and tagged by U.N. teams in the 1990s and pored over paper and computer files, the airfield’s director said. The sprayer systems, unaccounted for since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, were tested in the 1980s, a U.N. report said.

“We showed them everything,” said Montadhar Radeef Mohammed, who took over as airfield director in 1998. He told reporters he knew nothing about the sprayer contraptions.

As the inspectors searched the airfield, Iraqi officials said, Western warplanes bombed an oil company office building in the southern port city of Basra, killing four people and wounding 27. An Iraqi military spokesman said two rockets hit the offices of the Southern Oil Co. on Sunday morning. The company supervises the country’s oil exports under a U.N. program that allows Iraq to sell oil for food.

U.S. officials said U.S. and British planes policing the “no-fly” zone attacked air defense facilities near Basra in response to Iraqi antiaircraft artillery fire.