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Iraq Flies Inaugural Passenger Flights in Defiance of No-Fly Zones
Iraq sent domestic passenger flights carrying 156 people into skies patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes on Sunday, the first challenge of its kind to the no-fly zones that Iraq considers infringements on its sovereignty. Two planes left Baghdad at 1 p.m. bound for Basra in the southern no-fly zone and Mosul in the northern zone, the official Iraqi News Agency reported. They returned safely to Baghdad about four hours later, the agency said. Iraq, which says the flights mark the resumption of regular passenger service to the cities, used converted Russian-made military cargo planes for the flights _ an Antonov with 42 passengers to Mosul and an Ilyushin with 114 passengers to Basra. The resumption of the flights, which Iraq announced on Oct. 30, came nearly a decade after Iraq"s fleet of 15 Boeing airliners was moved to Jordan, Iran and Tunisia to escape bombing during the 1991 Gulf War. They remain abroad. Passengers aboard the inaugural flights included officials and journalists who returned with the planes to Baghdad. Thousands of people had gathered to welcome the planes on arrival in Basra and Mosul, according to INA. Transport Minister Ahmed Murtada Ahmed Khalil said flights will take off daily to the two cities. The United States says Iraqi military planes have violated the zones often with quick in-and-out forays since December 1998, when Iraq began challenging the patrols. The new challenges _ though in military aircraft _ marked the first civilian flights into the zone. The U.S.-British patrols bar fixed-wing Iraqi aircraft or helicopters from entering the zones, but there was no word on Sunday on whether Iraq had given Britain and the United States advance notice of the domestic flights.
In Egypt, Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that "these flights will continue ... since the aim of these flights is to destroy the American-British criminal act of imposing the no-fly zones."
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