Scud missiles fired at allied forces

Several Scud missiles were fired by Iraqi forces today, but none are believed to have hit allied targets.

One of the Scud missiles was intercepted by an American Patriot missile, said US officials.

Soldiers and journalists in the northern Kuwaiti desert quickly put on gas masks because of an alert caused by the missile.

But their fears that the missiles could be carrying chemical agents were unfounded and they were given the all-clear shortly afterwards.

Officers at Camp New Jersey told American soldiers about the Scud interception.

The bright, slow burn of Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles falling on Middle Eastern cities caused more panic than physical damage during the last Gulf War.

And the sight of these ageing, basic and often wayward weapons dropping out of the night sky could feature again in the looming conflict with Iraq.

Recent intelligence reports have estimated that Saddam still has several dozen Scud B missiles and there are fears he could use them to deliver chemical or biological weapons.

Iraq’s Scud B ballistic missiles are descended from the original Soviet-built Scuds of the 1950s, themselves based on V2 rockets developed by Germany in the Second World War.

The contrast between the hi-tech, precision weapons in the US arsenal and Iraq’s crude Scud Bs could not be greater.

Saddam’s short-range Scuds, imported by the hundred from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, are guided by gyroscope only during the first part of their flight.

Once the initial burn is over, the missiles’ targeting systems cut out and the Scud then “coasts”, unpowered and unguided, towards the region of the target within a range of about 400 miles.

Saddam used hundreds of Scuds – mostly of his Al Hussein model – during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and directed more than 90 at Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991.

British evidence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction alleged that Saddam had developed longer-range versions of the Scud that could reach targets as far away as Cyprus and Turkey.