- 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.
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- "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.
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- "The destroyed radar system was used to organise
take-off and landing of civilian planes conforming to civil aviation rules,"
the spokesman said.
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- 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.
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- Blasting "this continuing US aggression," the
spokesman said world and Arab civil aviation authorities should intervene
to put an end to such attacks.
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- "The US administration of evil and its lackey Britain
persist in their aggressive policy against the fighting and patient Iraqi
people," he said.
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- Iraq said the airport's civilian radar system was first
destroyed in a US raid on September 25.
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- Pentagon officials said the target on that occasion was
a mobile air defense radar that had been targeting US and British aircraft.
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- 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.
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- Basra airport had also been bombed in August 2001 by
US and British forces.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/mideast/article/english/0,10846,307381,00.html
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