Fighter jets from the US-British coalition bombed three Iraqi air defense sites in response to hostile fire Saturday, and dropped leaflets urging Iraqis to tune in to coalition radio broadcasts, the US military announced.
The warplanes used precision-guided munitions to strike cable repeater sites located near the city of An Nasiriyah, approximately 275km southeast of Baghdad, at about 19:15 GMT, according to a statement released by the US Central Command.
But there was no immediate word about the effectiveness of the strikes, with the command saying damage assessment was still under way.
Cable repeaters are used to relay and amplify signals between radar installations and anti-aircraft batteries, according to military experts.
"The coalition targeted the communications sites after Iraqi air defense forces fired multiple anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles at coalition aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone," the statement said.
The strike came just two days after coalition planes hit a similar set of Iraqi air defense cable repeaters outside the southern city of Al Kut in response to Iraqi anti-aircraft fire.
In Baghdad, an Iraqi air defense spokesman acknowledged firing surface-to-air missiles to chase away the US and British planes away but did not report any hits.
The spokesman, quoted by the official news agency INA, also accused the United States and Britain of bombing civilian targets in the southern Iraqi Missan province late Friday.
But the US Central Command, which did not report any strikes on Friday, said coalition aircraft "never target civilian populations or infrastructure and go to painstaking lengths to avoid injury to civilians and damage to civilian facilities."
The bombing was preceded by another massive airdrop of leaflets as part of a US-led psychological campaign designed to undercut the morale of Iraqi troops and erode support to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ahead of possible military action against his government.
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