U.S., UK step up strikes in no-fly zone

U.S. and British warplanes have bombed more than 80 targets in Iraq's southern "no-fly" zone over the past five months, conducting an escalating air war even as UN weapons inspections proceed and diplomats look for ways of heading off a full-scale war.

The air strikes have increased not only in number but in sophistication, with pilots using precision-guided bombs to strike what defence officials describe as mobile surface-to-air missiles, air defence radars, command centres, communications facilities and fiber optic cable repeater stations.

On Monday, the heaviest day of bombing in at least a year, U.S. and British jets for the first time struck five targets in a single day, hitting an air defence command site at Tallil, 170 miles southeast of Baghdad, and four repeater stations in southeastern Iraq.

Iraq says that many of the attacks have been on non-military targets and have resulted in civilian deaths.

The Iraqis said six people were injured in Monday's air strikes, which they claimed included civilian targets in the southern city of Basra.

U.S. military officials said the attacks are only initiated in response to Iraqi fire, and that the increase mirrors an increase by Iraqi President Saddam Hussain's forces in anti-aircraft and surface-to-air missile attacks on U.S. and British jets.

But they acknowledged that military planners are taking full advantage of the opportunity Saddam is handing them, targeting Iraq's integrated air defence network for destruction in a systemic fashion that will ease the way for U.S. air and ground forces if President Bush decides that war is the only option for disarming Iraq.

The aggressive tactics were ordered by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who disclosed in September that he had urged commanders to focus their retaliatory strikes not just on Iraqi radar and missile systems, but on air defence communications centres in an attempt to degrade Iraq's overall air defence network.

Last month, U.S. military officials acknowledged that they used an incident of Iraqi fire on jets patrolling the northern "no-fly" zone to justify a retaliatory strike in the south.

The tactic represented another escalation of enforcement activity by the Bush administration.

"The Iraqi regime has increased its attacks on the coalition, so the coalition has increased its efforts to protect its pilots," said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa.

"Every coalition action is in direct response to Iraqi hostile acts against our pilots, or the regime's attempts to materially improve is military infrastructure south of the 33rd parallel."

Anthony Cordesman, a former defence official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the increased U.S. air attacks are about far more than retaliation, however.

"You enforce containment when you carry out these strikes and you deter Iraq from any kind of military adventure," Cordesman said.

"And when you conduct these strikes, you are preparing part of the battleground for a war. But it doesn't mean that you've gone to war, and it doesn't mean war is inevitable."

Degrading air defenses in southern Iraq, said Loren Thompson, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute with ties to defence contractors and the Pentagon, will enable the U.S.military "to send in almost anything its wants - bombers, fighters, and helicopters with Special Operations Forces" should Bush decide to go to war.