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8 killed in US-British Air Strikes: Iraq
Eight civilians were killed and three others wounded when U.S.-British warplanes bombed southern Iraq on Sunday, an Iraqi military spokesman announced on Monday.
In a statement carried by the official Iraqi News Agency (INA), the spokesman said that U.S.-British planes attacked targets in the Salhiya region in southern Wasit Province on Sunday, leading to civilian casualties.
The U.S. has confirmed the air raids, saying that the U.S. and British jets bombed three surface-to-air missile sites in the southern no-fly zone of Iraq.
The southern no-fly zone, along with another one in northern Iraq, were established by the U.S.-led western allies after the 1991 Gulf War to keep Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at bay.
Iraq does not recognize the air exclusion zones and has regularly fired on the U.S. and British planes monitoring them.
The U.S. and Britain have intensified air raids on the two no- fly zones recently, in apparent retaliation against Iraq's claim that it shot down an unmanned U.S. reconnaissance plane on August 27.
The U.S. has acknowledged that this was the first U.S. aircraft to be lost over the two no-fly zones after the Gulf War.
Iraq has vowed to beef up its anti-aircraft defense, in a bid to shoot down allied planes enforcing the two no-fly zones.
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