[PEN-L:4275] Air strikes at Iraq go on and on and on

["Frank Durgin" <fdurgin1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Friday March 12 7:11 AM ET

U.S. Jets Fire At Iraqi Target In North No-Fly Zone

ANKARA (Reuters) - U.S. air force jets patrolling Iraq's northern no-fly
zone bombed at least one target Friday, a U.S. air force
official at the jets' home base in Incirlik in southern Turkey said.

``At approximately 1.30 p.m. Iraqi time (1030 GMT) U.S. planes responded to
Iraqi threats in the northern no-fly zone,''
Captain Manning Brown told Reuters. He said it was not yet clear how many
sites had been hit in the incident.

Such strikes have become a regular event since Baghdad announced in
December it would actively oppose the no-fly zones in
the north and south of Iraq, imposed by the United States and Britain after
the 1991 Gulf War.

Planes from the Incirlik air base patrol Iraqi skies north of the 36th
parallel to protect the area's Kurdish population from
attack by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces. A similar zone in the
south is aimed at protecting the Shi'ites there.

Most of northern Iraq is under the control of two Iraqi Kurdish parties
which broke away from Baghdad at the end of the Gulf
War, but a patch of territory around the city of Mosul remains in the hands
of the Iraqi government.

The U.S. government says two months of air strikes in the no-fly zones have
done more damage to Iraqi air defenses than the
four days of full-scale attacks on the country in December's Operation
Desert Fox.