US warplanes bombed a mobile air defence radar in a raid on the military side of the international airport in Basra in southern Iraq, Pentagon officials said on Thursday.
”Bottom line is, we’re not going to let (Saddam Hussein) put equipment in areas and then use it against us,” said Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan.
Iraq said the airport’s civilian radar system was destroyed in the raid, but Pentagon officials said the target was a mobile air defence radar that had been targeting coalition aircraft over the past week.
”It hit the mobile air defence radar that they positioned at their airfield,” Lapan said. ”They were using it to target our aircraft over the last week or so.”
He said the assessment of the damage inflicted by the raid was still underway but that the radar system that had been struck was ”definitely not” the airport’s civilian radar system.
General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said the radar was on a side of the airport used by the Iraqi military.
”The radar site that was struck was on the military side of the field, and in fact way off the end of the military side of the field,” he said.
”When you take a look at the picture of this, it is out in, basically, desert,” he said. ”There were no civilian activities or no civilian airplanes at that airfield when it was struck.”
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld heatedly denied Iraqi claims of civilian casualties, and complained that they were being reported at face value by news organisations.
”You know, the question I first asked was none of the questions you’re asking. I said, ”Did we get it? Did we destroy it?” That’s what I’m interested in.”
Pace, however, said the US Central Command was still assessing the bomb damage.
Pentagon officials have charged that Iraq has moved weapon systems into civilian areas, using installations like mosques and hospitals as shields.
Lapan said coalition forces enforcing no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq would engage targets in civilian areas ”if we think we can do so safely.”
Rumsfeld said, ”Most of what they’ve got that’s high value is in the Baghdad area, and we don’t go in there.”
The raid in Basra, a major port 390 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, was one of two carried out nearly simultaneously on Wednesday by coalition aircraft.
Warplanes also bombed an air defence communications facility at al-Kufa, about 125 kilometres south of Baghdad.
On Tuesday, coalition forces struck an air defence operations facility near al-Amarah and an air defence communications facility near Tallil in southern Iraq.
Rumsfeld said earlier this month that US and British forces were now trying to inflict lasting damage on Iraq’s fiber optic-linked air defence systems by going after buildings and other fixed facilities. – Sapa-AFP