ANKARA, April 5 (AFP) - U.S. warplanes bombed northern Iraq Wednesday after coming under Iraqi fire during routine patrol flights in the northern no-fly zone, U.S. military said.

The aircraft dropped "ordnance on elements of the Iraqi integrated air defense system" after Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft artillery from a site west of Bashiqah, the U.S. European Command based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a statement received here.

All aircraft returned safely to their base in Incirlik in southern Turkey, it added. The Incirlik base is home to Operation Northern Watch, a force of some 40 British and U.S. planes that patrols the northern no-fly zone imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War to protect the region's Kurdish population.

A similar exclusion zone was also set up over southern Iraq to protect the Shi’ite Muslim population there and is patrolled by U.S. and British aircraft based in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq does not recognize the zones, which are not authorized by any specific U.N. resolution, and has regularly fired on aircraft patrolling them since a joint U.S.-British air strike on Baghdad in December 1998.

U.S. and Britain say the planes only target military objectives in self-defense but the Iraqis say civilians and civilian installations are frequently hit.

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