BAGHDAD, May 27
(IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraqi state television Monday
aired footage of an unmanned "enemy" reconnaissance plane
which Baghdad said it "forced down" in the north of the
country Sunday.
The footage,
aired for two minutes, showed a plane some three meters (9.9 feet)
long with a red propeller on its tail and wings in V-form.
The plane, whose
body was painted in white, was shown lying in an undetermined
location, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
It was equipped
with a camera and electronic sensors, but the footage did not show any
inscriptions or writings identifying the country which used the drone
or any sign that it had been hit by anti-aircraft fire or
surface-to-air missiles.
"The drone
was forced down in our territory by our own means," at 0930 GMT
Sunday in northern Iraq,
a military spokesman earlier said.
Iraqi
anti-aircraft artillery managed to "take control of the drone and
force it to land" after it "violated Iraqi airspace to
undertake a spying mission," the spokesman said, without further
explanation.
"Our
anti-aircraft fighters thus confirm their ability to confront the
spying missions of the enemy, which uses sophisticated techniques to
obtain information that helps warplanes in attacks" on Iraq,
he said.
Iraq
reported that it shot down three unmanned U.S. spy planes in August,
September and October 2001, confirming official U.S. fears that
Baghdad upgraded
its previously-ineffectual air defense systems. The United States
admitted the losses.
Kuwait's daily
newspaper Arab Times newspaper reported Sunday that an unmanned U.S.
drone crashed Saturday in Kuwait as it was flying back from a
"surveillance operation."
There has been
no U.S. confirmation of the Kuwait crash.
Skirmishes in
the skies over Iraq
are an almost daily event, as U.S. and British warplanes patrol
"no-fly" zones imposed on the north and south of Iraq
after the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq
does not recognize the zones, not covered by any UN Security Council
resolution. According to Baghdad, U.S. and British air strikes killed
1,477 people and injured 1,358 since the two zones were set up
For their
part, the Americans said the Iraqi report was false.
