American planes strike Iraqi radar unit

WASHINGTON -- Iraqi forces moved a mobile radar unit into the country's southern no-fly zone and American aircraft bombed it Wednesday, defense officials said.

U.S. aircraft used precision-guided weapons to target the radar system near Al Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, officials said.

An unidentified Iraqi military spokesman told the official Iraqi News Agency that the "aggressive U.S.-British warplanes attacked our civil and service installations in Wasit province ... at 11:55 (a.m.) Baghdad time."

American and British coalition planes monitor a northern zone to protect the Kurdish minority from Iraqi forces and Americans fly the southern zone to protect the Shiites. Iraq considers the decade-old restricted zones a violation of its sovereignty and regularly shoots at pilots and uses various air defense equipment to track and harass them.

Hostilities between the Iraqi and coalition pilots have become routine. Other coalition bombings this week were launched on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. On Monday coalition aircraft also dropped nearly half a million leaflets over Iraq in the latest warning to Iraqi forces not to shoot at coalition planes and not to rebuild air defenses.

American planes flying in neighboring Kuwait, from which some of the no-fly zone patrols originate, also last week began broadcasting propaganda messages into Iraq criticizing President Saddam Hussein in an effort to weaken his support among his people and, in particular, his military.

President Bush has threatened to unseat Saddam, by military invasion if necessary, if he doesn't give up weapons of mass destruction Bush says he has.