Iraq said on Tuesday that its anti-aircraft forces shot down a US spy plane Tuesday in the region of the southern port city of Basra, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.
"Iraqi anti-aircraft fire in the region of Basra at 0700 GMT on Tuesday brought down an American spy plane," a military spokesman told INA, cited by AFP.
If confirmed, it will be the second plane Iraq has downed since August 27, and only the second allied aircraft casualty since the 1991 Gulf War.
"The plane was coming from Kuwaiti territory and was used by the US enemy to gather information for its planes operating against our installations, strategic sites and air forces," the spokesman said.
The report did not say what type of aircraft had been hit but added that it carried "high-tech intelligence gathering equipment."
The plane's wreckage "will be shown on television later in the day," the spokesman said, adding its destruction "avenged the martyrs of Iraq and Palestine."
The United States acknowledged on August 27 its first loss of an unmanned and unarmed Predator surveillance plane over southern Iraq while on a "routine mission and a supportive operation."
On Monday, Iraq announced that eight civilians were killed and three others injured in US and British airstrikes on northern Iraq.
The raids hit Salhiya region, in Wassel province, around 170 kilometres (105 miles) south of Baghdad, INA said, blasting "another savage attack by the United States and Britain against Iraqi citizens," according to AFP.
"Enemy US and British planes fired three missiles and some cluster bombs," the agency reported, quoting witnesses as saying "the victims had been preparing for prayers."
According to INA, palm groves in Salhiya were also destroyed in the attack.
The deaths take to 365 the number of people Baghdad says have been killed in US-British raids since December 1998.
British and US warplanes patrol no-fly zones imposed over northern and southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War to protect the regions' Kurdish and Shiite Muslim populations from Baghdad.
The attack came aims US reports that Iraq is upgrading its military technology and developing weapons of mass destruction in the absence of international monitoring.
The US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was quoted by reports as saying that Iraqi efforts were gathering pace since UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in late 1998.
"They have an appetite for weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld told Fox television.
"They have been, every period since they have been able to get the inspectors out of there, working diligently to increase their capabilities in every aspect of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology. And as they get somewhat stronger, the problem becomes somewhat greater."
"And that problem, particularly biological weapons, over the coming decade is going to be an increasingly serious one," he said.
Airstrikes have limited effectiveness against sites where the weapons are developed or deployed, Rumsfeld said, because some of those sites are underground or mobile.
The problem "will have to be attacked from a whole range of methods," he said.
"To the extent other countries keep trading with him and improving his fiber optics and improving his ability to cue and network, the risk level goes up," Rumsfeld told CNN television later Sunday.
"And then the United States and (Britain) are forced to go in and take out those capabilities."
US and British warplanes have carried out four other attacks on Iraqi air defenses since 25 August to enforce the no-fly zones imposed after the 1991 Gulf War.
The zones are not mandated by any UN Security Council resolution – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
