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US Warplanes Bomb Basra
International Airport Again

10-10-2

BAGHDAD (AFP) - US aircraft attacked the international airport at Basra in southern Iraq, the third such strike in two weeks, destroying its radar system, Iraq announced.
 
"The evil American crows have struck and destroyed the civilian radar system and damaged the terminal halls," a transport ministry spokesman told the official satellite television channel.
 
"The destroyed radar system was used to organise take-off and landing of civilian planes conforming to civil aviation rules," the spokesman said.
 
The raids on the airport were aimed at "depriving Iraqi people of their legitimate right to use all their planes and civil airports in security," he said.
 
Blasting "this continuing US aggression," the spokesman said world and Arab civil aviation authorities should intervene to put an end to such attacks.
 
"The US administration of evil and its lackey Britain persist in their aggressive policy against the fighting and patient Iraqi people," he said.
 
Iraq said the airport's civilian radar system was first destroyed in a US raid on September 25.
 
Pentagon officials said the target on that occasion was a mobile air defense radar that had been targeting US and British aircraft.
 
Baghdad then announced on September 29 that US aircraft again attacked the airport, destroying the civilian radar system anew, a charge that went unanswered in Washington.
 
Basra airport had also been bombed in August 2001 by US and British forces.
 
Almost daily skirmishes are reported in "no-fly" zones enforced by US and British warplanes over northern and southern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
 
An Iraqi military spokesman said Wednesday that four Iraqis were killed and 10 wounded when US and British warplanes bombed Nineveh province, 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Baghdad.
 
Iraq, which now faces the threat of a US military offensive aimed at ousting the regime of President Saddam Hussein, has never recognised the air exclusion zones, which are not sanctioned by any UN resolution.
 
http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/mideast/article/english/0,10846,307381,00.html





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