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U.S. and British warplanes bombed the premises of the Southern Oil Company in the southern Iraqi city of Basra
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BAGHDAD,
December 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - At least eight people
were killed and 20 injured when U.S. and British warplanes bombed the
premises of the Southern Oil Company in the southern Iraqi city of
Basra Sunday, December 1.
Two
rockets hit the compound at 11:00 am (0800 GMT), killing at least
eight people and wounding around 20, residents told Agence France-Presse
(AFP) by phone. A large number of passers-by were also slightly
injured by flying glass.
Between
600 and 700 employees were in the premises at the time of the raid on
Basra, 560 kilometers (350 miles) south of Baghdad, according to the
residents who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Baghdad
regularly says that U.S. and British warplanes enforcing “no-fly”
zones in northern and southern Iraq bomb civilian targets and cause
casualties among the civilian population.
Meanwhile,
U.N. experts entered Sunday a crop-spraying facility and a military
complex on the fourth day of inspections in Iraq which defied the
disarmament monitors to find anything incriminating.
Journalists
were kept out as a team from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) went to work at this town some 25
kilometers (15 miles) south-east of the capital.
Inspectors
parked a four-wheel drive across the entrance to the agriculture
ministry compound to prevent anyone else from going in or out.
Several
light aircraft with crop-spraying equipment could be seen around a
courtyard among numerous single-storey buildings.
Before
the 1991 Gulf War, the center housed a secret project on the
“Zubaidi system” using light aircraft and helicopters to deliver
chemical or biological agents as weapons.
Iraq
finally admitted to the United Nations in 1995 to having run a
bacteriological weapons program and went on to detail aerosol
dispersion techniques.
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Basra has been repeatedly attacked by U.S. and U.K. warplanes |
Baghdad
says the equipment involved has been destroyed and the program halted,
however weapons inspectors have not accepted that Iraq has disclosed
all its germ warfare activities.
Britain
has alleged that Iraq still possesses the capacity to deliver weapons
via crop-spraying techniques.
Meanwhile,
a second team of experts visited a military site at Bin Firnass in an
eastern suburb of Baghdad, Iraqi sources said.
However,
serious doubts have emerged over the surprise nature of the monitoring
process.
U.N.
spokesman Hiro Ueki admitted Saturday night, November 30, that the
head of a suspected weapons site had been given advance warning of the
visit by the U.N. experts to his facility earlier in the day.
Ueki
tried to play down possible controversy about whether U.N. inspections
of suspected weapons sites, which resumed on November 27, were really
on a no-notice basis as outlined under U.N. Security Council
Resolution 1441, saying sometimes Iraqi assistance was useful in
renovating monitoring equipment.
U.N.
disarmament inspectors combing Iraq for suspected weapons of mass
destruction will find nothing, the ruling Ba’ath Party newspaper
said Sunday.
“The
U.N. teams have found nothing in recent days and will find nothing in
coming days,” Ath-Thawra said.
“Iraq
has announced several times that it got rid of weapons of mass
destruction and that it has not produced any since the inspectors
withdrew in December 1998 on orders from the Americans,” the daily
added.
Al-Qadissiya
newspaper accused the United States of “becoming more aggressive
since the Security Council adopted Resolution 1441,” on November 8,
giving the inspectors sweeping powers to disarm the regime.
The
daily urged the world to stand up to the “aggressive
schizophrenia” of the United States which insists that Iraq is
developing weapons of mass destruction.
The
November 8 resolution gave the inspectors unprecedented powers to
search for the forbidden arms Baghdad strongly denies having.
Inspectors
from UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have
not reported anything untoward from site checks on Wednesday, Thursday
and Saturday.
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