U.S. bombs air defense site at Iraqi airport

By Chris Plante
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. fighter jets Thursday bombed a military radar at Basra International Airport, which the United States says was being used to track U.S. and British jets patrolling the southern no-fly zone, Pentagon officials told CNN.

"The airport is a 'dual use' airport," one senior official said, "with civilian facilities on one side and military facilities on the other."

"We used the right kind of bombs on the target to see to it that there would be minimal collateral damage," the official said.

On Friday, Baghdad acknowledged the air strikes.

Quoting a military spokesman, Iraqi News Agency reported, U.S. jets hit Basra Airport in southern Iraq.

U.S. officials said the radar was capable of tracking airplanes more than 170 miles away, which gave Iraqi air defense units the ability to see U.S. and British planes across the skies of Kuwait, long before they entered Iraqi airspace.

RESOURCES Message Board: Iraq

"It was a cuing radar, used to track allied planes and alert air defense units that can fire missiles" and anti-aircraft artillery, he said.

The radar was bombed after nightfall, about 8:30 p.m. local time, in an effort to avoid civilian casualties, officials said.

The civilian airfield "normally operates in daylight hours only" according to an informed Defense Department officials who asked that they remain anonymous.

U.S. F-16 Fighting Falcons bombed the site with precision guided munitions.

U.S. and British jets struck two sites in southern Iraq on Tuesday and appear to have stepped up air attacks on Iraqi air defense sites recently, particularly in southern Iraq.

Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who commands U.S. forces in the region, had asked permission to launch several days of heavy strikes against Iraq's increasingly threatening integrated air defense system but the request was denied by the White House.

Pentagon sources told CNN that political sensitivities in the area and a desire to maintain a relatively low profile regarding enforcement of the no-fly zones were the reasons cited for the White House denial.

As a result, Franks and his counterpart with responsibility for the northern no-fly zone have increased the frequency of attacks against individual elements of the Iraqi air defenses.

Iraq has declared the enforcement of the no-fly zones to be illegal while the U.S. and Britain contend that the intrusive practice is provided for under U.N. resolutions aimed at protecting minority Shiite and Kurdish populations in southern and northern Iraq respectively.

Iraqi air defense forces have fired on U.S. and British aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone more than 375 times this year and more than 1,010 times since December 1998.