World

British Warplane Strikes Iraq

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 4, 1999 / 9:58 AM EST / CBS

A British Tornado jet attacked an Iraqi military radar site in the southern "no-fly" zone Thursday in response to two Iraqi violations, the U.S. military said.

U.S. Central Command said no U.S. or British planes were damaged in the attack and that damage to Iraqi targets was being assessed.

The U.S. statement said the British jet struck a radar site some 15 miles south of the town of Al-Basrah near Ash Shuaybah in southern Iraq at about 8:15 a.m. ET.

"The strikes were in response to two Iraqi violations of the southern 'no-fly' zone and aircraft illuminations by Iraqi surface-to-air missiles," the statement said.

The U.S. statement Thursday said there have been more than 95 Iraqi violations in the Western-enforced southern "no-fly" zone and 35 incidents involving Iraqi surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft artillery and target-tracking radar illuminations against U.S. and British aircraft patrolling the Western-enforced zone.

In one of the heaviest raids on Iraq in two months, U.S. jets Monday dropped more than 30 bombs on radio relay sites, communications targets and air defense guns in Iraq's northern "no-fly" zone.

Together with an attack the previous day, those bombs caused a disruption in the flow of oil from Iraq to Turkey, through which about half of Baghdad's oil exports pass in accordance with the U.N.-mandated oil-for-food deal.

The flow was restored Thursday, without apparent effect on U.N.-administered oil revenues, which were cushioned through the export of Iraqi oil reserves already in Turkey.

Clashes in the "no-fly" zones have become routine since four days of U.S.-British airstrikes in mid-December. After "Operation Desert Fox," Baghdad said it would no longer tolerate Western patrols over the "no-fly" zones, which it sees as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.