Pentagon Dismisses Iraqi Claim of Hitting Coalition Aircraft
WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (News Agencies) - The U.S. Defense Department dismissed as baseless on Wednesday an Iraqi claim that it hit a coalition aircraft enforcing a "no-fly" zone in southern Iraq.
"We were flying over the southern no-fly zone today but all planes returned safely to base [with] no indication that any were hit," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. "Iraq has been known to make false claims in the past."
Davis said he was speaking for both the United States and Britain, which also patrols the exclusion zones in the north and south of Iraq.
Earlier Wednesday, Baghdad said its anti-aircraft defenses had hit one of a group of Western planes patrolling the southern no-fly area. Iraq claimed that one of its surface-to-air missiles hit an allied jet fighter patrolling the skies over southern Iraq, but that the plane did not go down and was seen flying toward Saudi Arabia.
"Brave Iraqi men in the missile forces hit one of the enemy's planes," the Iraqi News Agency quoted a military spokesman as saying. ''Our heroic anti-aircraft missile units confronted the enemy warplanes and, with God's help, hit one of them.''
The zones were set up by the United States, Britain and France 10 years ago to protect the areas' ethnic Kurdish and Shi'ite after a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraq from Kuwait.
The United Nations has not sanctioned the "no-fly zones," and France ended its involvement in enforcing them a few years ago. Iraq considers the zones illegal and has vowed to shoot down coalition planes.
A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, Marine Maj. Brad Lowell, said "we can account for all our aircraft" in the region.
