US warplanes attack Iraqi mobile radar unit

US warplanes today attacked an Iraqi mobile radar unit that had been moved into southern no-fly zone.

The aircraft used precision-guided weapons to target the radar system near Al Kut, about 100 miles south-east of Baghdad, officials said.

An Iraqi military spokesman said "aggressive US-British warplanes attacked our civil and service installations in Wasit province at 11:55 Baghdad time".

“Our courageous anti-aircraft units confronted the warplanes and forced them to leave our skies for their bases in Kuwait,” the spokesman added.

American and British coalition planes monitor a northern zone to protect the Kurdish minority from Iraqi forces and Americans fly the southern zone to protect the Shiites.

Iraq considers the decade old restricted zones a violation of its sovereignty and regularly shoots at pilots and uses various air defence equipment to track and harass them.

Hostilities between the Iraqi and coalition pilots have become routine. Other coalition bombings this week were launched on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

On Monday coalition aircraft also dropped nearly half a million leaflets over Iraq in the latest warning to Iraqi forces not to shoot at coalition planes and not to rebuild air defences.