US Bombs Iraq After Spy Plane Shot Down

Allied jets last night [08.27.01] bombed Iraq in
response to Baghdad shooting down an unmanned US surveillance plane. One Iraqi was killed and three
others wounded in the combined US/British air
strikes in northern Iraq, a military spokesman
said in Baghdad.

08.28.01

Allied jets last night bombed Iraq in
response to Baghdad shooting down an unmanned US surveillance plane.

One Iraqi was killed and three
others wounded in the combined US/British air
strikes in northern Iraq, a military spokesman
said in Baghdad.

The warplanes bombed Iraq in response to Iraqi
fire in routine patrols over the no-fly zone in
the region, the Stuttgart-based US European
Command said.

The aircraft dropped "ordnance
on elements of the Iraqi integrated air defence
system" after Iraqis fired anti-aircraft
artillery from sites north of Mosul, the statement said.

The jets returned safely to their base in
Incirlik in Turkey’s southern province of Adana.

The bombing in northern Iraq followed the
disappearance earlier of an unmanned US
surveillance plane in a similar exclusion zone
over southern Iraq.

A Pentagon official said the
plane, which was on a mission over southern Iraq,
had failed to return to its base.

It was the first admission from the US that it
had lost an unmanned spy plane.

The official Iraqi News Agency had reported
earlier from Baghdad that Iraqi anti-aircraft
forces had shot down a US spy plane in the
region of the southern port city of Basra.

"It was operating in southern Iraq to gather
information on our strategic sites and our
anti-aircraft defences," the statement said.

Iraq has tried to shoot down a US plane
before. But until last night the US always had
denied any of its aircraft had been hit,
although it acknowledged an increasing number of
close calls.

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

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