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Bombs Fall As Iraqi Sanctions Regime Modified
Washington (AFP) May 20, 2002 US warplanes struck a radar in southern Iraq after a surface-to-air missile was fired at coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone in the south, the US military said Monday. In Baghdad, a military spokesman said Iraq fired surface-to-air missiles at US and British warplanes after they bombed civilian targets in the south, wounding four Iraqis, late Sunday. "Enemy (US and British) warplanes bombed civilian and services installations in the province of Muthanna, wounding four citizens," the spokesman said, quoted by Iraq's official INA news agency. "Iraq's missile batteries confronted (the aircraft) and forced them to flee to their bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait," he said. The US Central Command said the warplanes "used precision-guided weapons to strike an aircraft direction-finding site in southern Iraq at approximately 6:30 pm EDT (2230 GMT)" on Sunday. The site was a radar "that actually has the ability to share information with other systems," said Lieutenant Commander Matthew Klee, a spokesman at the command, which is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. The radar was near As-Salman, about 270 kilometers (170 miles) south of Baghdad, he said. Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, operations director of the Joint Staff, said it was a fixed site that was being used to coordinate more effective attacks on coalition aircraft. "They are always, always, trying something new, different in order to confront our aircraft, and we're always willing to make sure that they can't do it effectively," he said. Klee said it was attacked two hours after a surface-to-air missile was fired at coalition aircraft patrolling a no-fly zone over southern Iraq. "Coalition aircraft struck carefully pre-planned targets to neutralize hostile threats endangering our aircrews," the command said. Iraq has been actively challenging US-British enforcement of the no-fly zones in the north as well as the south since December 1998. The zones were imposed in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. The last air strike in southern Iraq was on April 15. Iraq has improved the accuracy of its attacks on coalition aircraft by using buried fiber optic cables to link its radars to command centers that control missile batteries in the south. Senior Pentagon officials have said that Iraq has been moving mobile surface-to-air missile systems into the no-fly zones in greater numbers after a period of relative quiet. No manned US or British aircraft have been shot down over Iraq since the Gulf War, but US military analysts believe that downing a US aircraft remains a key Iraqi goal.
UN Security Council Approves New Iraqi Sanctions Regime The council adopted a goods review list (GRL) to replace the cumbersome vetting procedures of the UN's oil-for-food lifeline, which has for five and a half years enabled Iraq to import basic necessities despite the trade embargo.
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