Washington - US F-16 warplanes attacked a radar at an airport in southern Iraq yesterday in the second such raid against Baghdad's air defences this week, US defence officials said.
The officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that four F-16 attack jets conducted the raid and returned safely to bases in a neighbouring country.
They said it was part of a continuing attempt to degrade Iraq's capability to shoot down U.S. and British warplanes patrolling two "no-fly" zones in Iraq.
"The attack was against a radar at a combined military-civilian airfield near the city of Basra," one of the defence officials said. "The radar is used to track (US and British) coalition aircraft." A similar raid was carried out in the south by both US and British aircraft on Tuesday, a day after Iraq said it shot down an unmanned US reconnaissance aircraft over southern Iraq.