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BAGHDAD, May 3 (AFP)-Three Iraqis were wounded when U.S. and British planes bombed northern Iraq on Wednesday, an Iraqi military spokesperson said, quoted by the official INA news agency. "Enemy planes bombed civilian installations in the provinces of Nineveh, Erbil, and Dohuk, where three civilians were injured," he said. "The air defense artillery swung into action and drove back the enemy planes, which fled to their bases in Turkey," he added. Earlier Wednesday the U.S. military reported that its planes bombed northern Iraq after coming under fire during routine patrols over the northern no-fly zone. U.S. planes on a mission over the zone "dropped ordnance on elements of the Iraqi integrated air defense system" after Iraqi forces targeted them with radar and fired artillery from a site near Bashiqah, the Stuttgart-based US European Command said in a statement received here. All the aircraft returned safely to their base in Incirlik in southern Turkey, it added. Some 40 British and U.S. planes are based at Incirlik to patrol 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 supposedly to protect the Shi’a 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 joint U.S. British air raids on Baghdad in December 1998. The 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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