U.S. Intensifies Airstrikes Against Iraqi Defense Sites

WASHINGTON — U.S. warplanes struck air-defense sites in northern Iraq with more than 30 laser-guided bombs Monday, marking the most intense day of attacks since Iraqi planes began routinely entering prohibited sections of their nation’s airspace more than two months ago, Pentagon officials said.

American F-15E fighters hit Iraqi communications sites, radio-relay facilities and antiaircraft guns near the city of Mosul with 500- and 2,000-pound bombs, officials said. The planes were responding to several incidents in which Iraqi forces, in a provocative move, “painted” U.S. aircraft with their radar, officials said.

Also Monday, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen acknowledged that American planes may have interrupted the flow of Iraqi oil that is sold under a U.N. program to bring the country food and medicine.

He said U.S. planes involved in retaliatory strikes Sunday may have hit an Iraqi communications station near Mosul that controls operations of an oil pipeline plus some air-defense operations.

But he said any interruption was unintentional.

“We responded to attacks upon our aircraft by targeting those facilities that placed our pilots in jeopardy,” Cohen said. “We believe that this communications facility was one that was used for communications purposes [by] their military.”

Cohen asserted that it is Iraqi President Saddam Hussein who has been guilty of blocking the oil-for-food program by failing to distribute $275 million in food, medicine and other supplies that are stored in warehouses.

Iraqi officials charged Sunday that U.S. planes had put the pipeline out of commission, killing one person and injuring two others. U.S. officials initially said they had no information that American operations had caused any such casualties or damage.

On Monday, the official Iraqi News Agency claimed that a new round of airstrikes on military and civilian targets had killed one person and injured nine others in the north. Iraqi officials contended that a U.S. warplane was downed, but U.S. officials denied this.

U.S. planes have conducted about 100 strikes in “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq since Dec. 28. After a four-day air campaign that ended earlier in the month, Iraqi planes began violating the no-fly zones on that day.

The zones, which extend south of the 33rd parallel and north of the 36th parallel, were set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to keep Hussein from using aircraft to harass Kurdish and Shiite Muslim opponents.

Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that the strikes have destroyed about 20% of Hussein’s strategic surface-to-air missile systems. The Iraqis haven’t destroyed any U.S. planes or injured any pilots during that period, U.S. officials say.

But neither side is showing signs of stopping the low-level air engagement that now has gone on longer than any U.S. air effort since the Vietnam War.

“The United States is simply doing what it has been doing since the Persian Gulf conflict: It is enforcing the no-fly zones,” said Cohen, who is scheduled to leave Wednesday for the Gulf for consultations on the Iraq issue.

U.S. officials have slightly escalated the conflict by authorizing pilots to strike air-defense facilities and command centers that have not directly challenged them. Iraqi officials have vowed to continue challenging the no-fly zones, which they view as a violation of the country’s sovereignty.