BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON, 4 March 2003 — Iraq said yesterday that US and British warplanes killed six civilians and wounded another 15 in raids on Basra, but Washington said the jets struck military targets after coming under anti-aircraft fire.
An Iraqi military spokesman said the planes patrolling a “no-fly” zone in the south of the country entered Iraqi airspace at 9:45 p.m. (1845 GMT) on Sunday and later targeted civilian sites in the province of Basra.
The United States military claimed that the planes attacked five air defense targets early yesterday in response to anti-aircraft fire from the ground.
“This target, contrary to reports of the Iraqi News Agency, were not civilian. It was an air defense facility. This is another example of the Iraq propaganda machine spitting out absolute untruths,” said Capt. Frank Thorp, chief media spokesman for Central Command forward headquarters in Qatar.
A British Defense Ministry spokeswoman said Britain would look into the Iraqi allegations. “This is one of the stronger allegations they have made so we are looking into it,” she said.
Senior US defense officials said on Sunday there had been a shift in strategy in the no-fly zones over Iraq, set up after the Gulf War and now covering more than half the country. New targets include surface-to-surface missile systems and multiple-launch rockets that could be used against ground troops in an invasion or against neighboring countries.
In a setback to Washington’s plans, there was little hope yesterday that Turkey’s Parliament might quickly reconsider its narrow vote at the weekend to bar US forces from using Turkish soil as a launch pad to attack Iraq.
Kuwait offered to accept US troops Washington had wanted to deploy in Turkey. “If they (United States) present a formal request we are willing,” Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Hamad Al-Sabah told reporters in Kuwait City.
Kuwait also said it will cut as much as a third of its oil output if war erupts, underlining concerns that more than just Iraqi supplies will be stopped during a conflict.
The state Kuwait Oil Co. said it would shut its northern oil fields near the border with Iraq as a safety precaution, closing 400,000 barrels per day of Kuwait’s 2.1 million bpd. It also said the 300,000 bpd western Manakish oil field might be closed.
With more than a dozen cargo ships loaded with US tanks and other equipment waiting off Turkey to unload, it was not clear whether leaders in Ankara would press Parliament for a new vote later this week. Pentagon officials stressed that President George W. Bush had not given any go-ahead for an invasion and that any attack would likely be delayed for only a week to 10 days if Turkey’s Parliament soon cast a fresh vote to allow the basing.
But analysts said the delay could stretch for two weeks or more, possibly into April after the new moon that would give more light to the US advantage of night fighting in a blitzkrieg attempt to capture Baghdad itself.
A top US general said a war in Iraq would be successful even without a northern front.
“I don’t think it’s absolutely a show stopper in terms of whether you have a northern front or not,” Gen. James L. Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, told a news conference in Stuttgart, Germany. “We’re going to be successful regardless of what we’re limited to.”
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Turkey will lose much of the $6 billion in aid offered by the United States.
The United Nations said Iraq will submit a new report on VX nerve gas and anthrax stocks in a week’s time as Baghdad scrapped more of its banned missiles yesterday.
Britain dismissed the latest Iraqi concessions. “Given the history of deception, cheating and lies it is understandable that we should be approaching what we are seeing at the moment with a degree of skepticism,” a government spokesman said.
