Four Iraqis Killed in US, British Air Strikes

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, February 05, 2002

Four Iraqis Killed in US, British Air Strikes

A total of four people were killed when warplanes of the United States and Britain bombed northern Iraq on Monday morning, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

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A total of four people were killed when warplanes of the United States and Britain bombed northern Iraq on Monday morning, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

The spokesman told the official Iraqi News Agency that at 11:45 a.m. (0845 GMT), U.S. and British planes bombed "civil" installations in the Mosul city of the northern Neineva Province.

Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery opened fire at the hostile planes and "forced them to flee to their bases in Turkey," the spokesman said.

Neineva, along with provinces of Dohuk and Erbil, are located inside the northern no-fly zone set up by the U.S.-led Western allies after the 1991 Gulf War with the claimed aim of protecting the Kurds from the persecution of the Iraqi government.

A similar air exclusion zone was also established in southern Iraq to allegedly protect the Shiite Muslim there.

Iraq has never recognized the two no-fly zones and has regularly opened fire at the Western planes enforcing them.

The latest air raids by the U.S. and Britain came amid accusations by U.S. President George W. Bush, who said in his first State of the Union address on January 29 that Iraq, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea formed "an axis of evil."

Bush accused the three countries of seeking weapons of mass destruction and warned that they could be targets of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, which has been launched since last October.

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