One Killed, One Injured in Bomb Explosion in IraqOne Iraqi women was killed and another injured on Monday when a bomb believed to be left over in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War exploded, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.The bomb went off as the two sisters were collecting a kind of desert plant in the Al-Qaim region of the western Al-Anbar Province, the INA said. The INA quoted a civil defense official as saying that since the Gulf War, Iraqi civil defense squads have defused more than 56,000 cluster bombs and missiles. During the Gulf War, triggered by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the United States-led multinational force defeated Iraq and drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. After the war, the U.S. and its Western allies set up the two so-called no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, with the claimed aim to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shi'ite Muslims in the south from the persecution of President Saddam Hussein. The US and British warplanes have been enforcing the two zones by patrolling and bombing targets inside the air exclusion zones. The Iraqi authorities estimate that the Gulf War and constant bombardments in the no-fly zones have left some 370,000 unexploded bombs, mines and artillery shells. |
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