Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, September 27, 2002
US-British Warplanes Bomb Civilian Airport in Iraq
US and British warplanes attacked a civilian airport in southern Iraq overnight, causing damage to its radar system and the service building, an Iraqi government spokesman said on Thursday.
US and British warplanes attacked a civilian airport in southern Iraq overnight, causing damage to its radar system and the service building, an Iraqi government spokesman said on Thursday.
At 00:45 a.m. local time (2045 GMT Wednesday), US and British planes bombed the civil airport in the southern city of Basra, destroying its main radar system and damaging the terminal building, Iraq's state-owned satellite channel quoted the spokesman as saying.
He called the latest US-British bombings on a civilian airport as "terrorist act that breached regulations of the International Air Transport Association."
Basra is within the so-called southern no-fly zone, parallel to another one in northern Iraq.
US and British planes have been patrolling the two no-fly zones since the 1991 Gulf War with the claimed aim of protecting the Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from the persecution of the Iraqi government.
On Aug. 27, US and British planes fired two missiles on a civilian airport in the northern city of Mosul, damaging the travellers' building and the radar system that controlled the take-offs and landings of civil airliners, a source from the Transportation and Communication Ministry said.