U.S., British Planes Strike Iraq’s Southern No-Fly Zone

Coalition aircraft struck an anti-artillery site
in Iraq’s southern “no-fly zone” early
Saturday July 7,2001 the U.S. Central Command announced. A statement from the Central Command said the strike, which was performed at 3:15 a.m. EDT with precision-guided weapons, was in response to “hostile acts against coalition aircraft.”

Coalition aircraft struck an anti-artillery site
in Iraq’s southern “no-fly zone” early
Saturday July 7,2001 the U.S. Central Command announced.

A statement from the Central Command said the
strike, which was performed at 3:15 a.m. EDT with
precision-guided weapons, was in response to
“hostile acts against coalition aircraft.”

Damage assessment is ongoing, the statement said.

A spokesman for Iraqi Air Defense Command said
Iraq’s missile force and anti-aircraft artillery
drove the planes out of the disputed airspace and
back to their bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,
the Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.

All coalition aircraft returned safely to
their base aboard the USS Constellation in the
Arabian Gulf, said Lt. Col. Rick Thomas of the
U.S. Central Command.

The last strike by coalition forces in the
southern no-fly zone was also against an Iraqi
anti-aircraft artillery site on June 26.

U.S. and British aircraft monitor the northern
and southern no-fly zones, which were put in place
following the 1991 Persian Gulf War as part of an
effort to prevent the Iraqi government of
President Saddam Hussein from persecuting the
minority Shiite Muslims in the south and the
Kurdish population in northern Iraq.

There have been more than 900 separate
incidents of Iraqi surface-to-air missile and
anti-aircraft artillery fire directed at coalition
aircraft since December 1998, including more than
275 in this calendar year, the Pentagon said last
month.

When was the last time the U.S. Bombed Iraq? –http://www.ccmep.org/us_bombing_watch.html

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Author: CNN