WASHINGTON, November 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. Navy warplanes tasked with patrolling a no-flight zone in southern Iraq are also practicing bombing runs against Iraqi targets, according to a big U.S. paper Sunday, November 3.

Navy pilots are conducting mock strikes against airfields, towers and other military sites in Iraq, familiarizing themselves with targets they may be called on to strike as the United States prepares for possible military action against Baghdad, the New York Times reported.

"It gives us the opportunity to train in the same environment that we may possibly go to war in," Captain Kevin C Albright, who commands the air wing of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, based in the Persian Gulf, told the newspaper.

"We are looking at target sets and practicing," he said.

The no-flight zones in southern and northern Iraq were established after the 1991 Gulf war to prevent Iraq from carrying out air strikes against Shiites in southern Iraq and Kurdish forces in the north of the country. The zones were not supported by any UN Security Council resolutions.

The zones have been patrolled by the U.S. Air Force and Navy and by British forces.

Since then, the allied patrols have grown into a sort of low-grade war, with Iraq firing at allied patrols more than 130 times since mid-September, according to Pentagon officials.

In response, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has given U.S. warplanes the authority to attack a broader array of targets, Pentagon officials told the Times.

At the beginning of the Bush administration, there was some debate within the American military whether the patrols were worth the wear and tear on equipment and the risk to allied pilots, who have repeatedly been fired at by Iraqi antiaircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles and who have responded by bombing Iraqi air defenses, according to the Times.

But with Washington and Baghdad on a collision course, that debate is long forgotten. The allied patrols, in fact, have grown into a low-grade war.

Instead of focusing on mobile anti-aircraft systems, which Iraq can hide, the Pentagon has authorized the military to attack an expanded set of command and control centers, communications relay stations, military radars and other stationary targets, the newspaper wrote.

The advantage of the Lincoln aircraft carrier, said the New York Times, is that it represents four and a half acres of sovereign U.S. territory.

This means political considerations by Arab Gulf nations do not affect the U.S. Navy's ability to conduct bombing missions.

That is not the case for land-based allied patrols, which have been limited by political constraints, the paper said.

U.S. and British planes based in Kuwait are authorized to bomb targets in Iraq, it noted. But many planes that help monitor the no-flight zone are based in Saudi Arabia, which does not allow them to be used in actual bombing missions.