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U.S. launches major air attack on Iraq
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Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Friday, August 10, 2001
NICOSIA Ñ The United States has launched what officials termed a
major attack on Iraq.
About 50 U.S. warplanes struck three air-defense installations in
southern Iraq on Friday. This included an air defense control center that
connects by fiber-optic cables an anti-aircraft missile site and a
long-range radar station.
A Pentagon source said all planes returned safely to base.
It was the first major U.S. attack on Iraq since February. The source
said damage to Iraqi military installations was still being assessed.missiles from decoys. The radar would use both S-band and X-band radars.
The bombing strike followed stepped-up efforts by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein military to shoot down U.S. and British warplanes that have been policing no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.
None of those planes has been shot down. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a recent news conference that Iraq was improving its air defenses ``both quantitatively and qualitatively'' with fiber-optic communications cabling.
It was at least the second time this week that allied planes had struck Iraqi targets in the no-fly zones.
U.S. planning had been hampered by the quickness with which fiber-optic cables Ñ damaged by the U.S. strike in February Ñ had been repaired.
The dilemma for the administration, the officials said, stemmed from the
February attack on Iraqi anti-aircraft command centers around Baghdad. The
centers were developed by China, which laid fiber-optic cables underground
to link radar with anti-aircraft batteries.
Several weeks after the February attack, the officials said, the Saddam
regime managed to repair and reoperate the sites. Since then, Iraq has
steadily improved its air defense capability.
"We've tackled some of their fiber-optic cable," Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld said in a briefing on Friday. "The problem is when you do
that, it gets re-laid."
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