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Iraq Says 1 Killed, 3 Injured in US-British Air Strikes
A civilian was killed and three others injured when US and British warplanes bombed northern Iraq Monday morning, an Iraqi military spokesman said.
In a statement carried by the official INA news agency, the spokesman said that at 10:30 a.m. (0630 GMT), U.S. and British planes, crossing into northern Iraq through Turkey, made 16 armed sorties over the northern provinces of Dohuk, Neiveva and Erbil.
"The enemy planes attacked civilian and service installations" and led to the casualties of the Iraqi civilians, the spokesman said.
Iraqi air defense forces opened fire at the hostile planes and " forced them to flee to their bases in Turkey," he added.
As to the U.S. reconnaissance plane shot down by Iraqi anti- aircraft artillery earlier Monday, the spokesman said that at 8:45 a.m. (0445 GMT), the U.S. plane entered Iraqi airspace and flew over the areas of Um-Qasr and Shiaba in the southern Basra Province, and was downed about one hour later.
"The wreckage of the U.S. plane will be shown on Iraqi TV," he was quoted as saying.
The U.S. acknowledged on Monday that it might have lost an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft over southern Iraq.
"It appears that an unmanned aircraft, a 'Predator,' has not returned from a mission over southern Iraq," a Pentagon official said.
Iraq has often announced that its anti-aircraft artillery hit or even shot down U.S. and British planes overflying two no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq, a claim firmly rejected by the U.S. and Britain.
Iraq announced earlier this month that it would beef up its anti-aircraft defense to bring down the allied planes enforcing the two no-fly zones.
The U.S. and British planes raided targets in the zones several times this month to retaliate against Iraq's improved air defense system and its stepped-up efforts to shoot down the coalition planes.
The air exclusion zones were set up by the U.S.-led Western allies after 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.
Iraq does not recognize the zones and has regularly fired at U. S. and British aircraft patrolling them.
U.S. Confirms Unmanned Reconnaissance Aircraft Missing Over Iraq The U.S. Defense Department said Monday that a 3.2-million-dollar unmanned U.S. Air Force RQ- 1B "Predator" aircraft is missing after flying a routine reconnaissance mission over southern Iraq.
"The aircraft may have crashed or been shot down," the first of its kind to be lost over Iraq, said David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.
Earlier, Iraq said its air defenses shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane flying over the southern part of the country Monday. It did not say whether a pilot was on board.
The Pentagon said all of its manned aircraft have been accounted for in Iraq.
The United States has lost Predator reconnaissance planes to hostile fire before, mainly in the Balkans, but rarely if ever over Iraq.
Also on Monday, U.S. planes attacked a SA-3 surface-to-air missile site in northern Iraq, a Pentagon official said.
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