Four Iraqis Killed in Air Strikes

Four Iraqi civilians were killed in air raids by US and British warplanes in the north of the country on Monday, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

"Four Iraqi civilians were killed in bombing by enemy planes of civilian installations in the city of Mosul," located 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Baghdad, the spokesman said, quoted by the state INA news agency.

The US military said earlier that US warplanes had struck Iraqi air defenses in northern Iraq after coalition aircraft came under fire while patrolling a no-fly zone.

"Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft artillery from sites northeast of Mosul while ONW (Operation Northern Watch) aircraft conducted routine enforcement of the northern no-fly zone," the US European Command said.

"Coalition aircraft responded to the Iraqi attacks by dropping precision ordnance on elements of the Iraqi integrated air defense system," said the command, which is based in Stuttgart, Germany.

Almost daily skirmishes are reported in the no-fly zones enforced by US and British warplanes over northern and southern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

Baghdad does not recognize the air exclusion zones, which are not sanctioned by any UN resolution.

(China Daily Februray 5, 2002)