Warplanes Hit Iraqi Missile Systems

Warplanes taking part in U.S.-British patrols attacked five missile sites in northern and southern Iraq on Tuesday, including four battlefield rocket launchers that could be used against U.S. and British troops, the U.S. military said.

The airstrikes were the latest in an increasing series of allied attacks in “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq.

The planes struck a surface-to-surface multiple-launch rocket system and an antiaircraft missile launcher in southern Iraq near Basra and three surface-to-surface missile sites near Mosul in northern Iraq, the military said.

The strikes on several missile batteries designed to attack troops appeared to be a serious effort by the United States to soften up Iraqi defenses in advance of any invasion. The U.S. has tens of thousands of troops in Kuwait not far from Iraq’s southern border.

“The coalition executed today’s strike after Iraqi forces moved the mobile missile system into range of coalition forces in Kuwait,” U.S. Central Command said.

Other strikes since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and increasingly in recent months, have been aimed at Iraq’s air defenses, which the United States charges have attempted to shoot down aircraft policing the no-fly zones.

The U.S. and Britain declared the zones in northern and southern Iraq after the Gulf War to protect Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from Baghdad’s forces. Iraq does not recognize the zones.