Iraq vowed Tuesday to shoot down more US and British aircraft, a day after Washington admitted the loss of a spy plane for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War, said AFP.
"Iraq's valiant decision to fight aggression is irreversible ... to achieve the legitimate aims of its people," said Babel newspaper, run by President Saddam Hussein's son, Uday.
The downing of the unmanned surveillance aircraft on Monday by Iraq's anti-aircraft defenses "laid bare the lying arrogance" of the United States, the daily said.
"The downing of the American electronic crow, equipped with the best surveillance technology and the debris of which the world has seen, clearly shows the determination of Iraqis to fight heroically against aggression," Babel added.
Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz declared late Monday that "Iraq is determined to inflict more losses on the American and British aggressors and to improve its (military) capacities despite the unfair embargo.
"The fact that an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over Basra by our anti-aircraft defenses is proof of the improvement of Iraq's military capacities," he added in a statement, carried by the Iraqi News Agency (INA).
Saddam Hussein warned on August 1 that the United States and Britain would suffer greater losses because their air assaults had pushed Iraq to upgrade its defense systems.
Footage of the pulverized plane was broadcast Monday night on Iraqi television.
The clip showed the wreckage -- including a plane engine and electrical wires -- in a desert area, along with a metallic piece with the inscription "property of the United States Air Force."
The Predator RQ-1 is one of the US planes stationed in the Gulf and also has been widely used in the Balkans.
Meanwhile, Baghdad said on Monday that an Iraqi civilian was killed and three others wounded in US-British attacks in northern Iraq.
"Enemy planes, coming from Turkish airspace, bombarded civilian installations in northern Iraq, killing one Iraqi and wounding three others," said the official Iraqi News Agency (INA).
Anti-aircraft defense systems fired back and "obliged the enemy planes to take flight toward their base in Turkey," INA said, quoting a military spokesman.
The report did not say where the victims were found, but indicated that the "enemy planes had carried out their raids on the (northern) provinces of Dohuk, Erbil and Nineveh."
From Ankara, the US military confirmed it had bombed northern Iraq in response to Iraqi fire during routine patrols over the no-fly zone in the region.
Aircraft dropped "ordnance on elements of the Iraqi integrated air defense system" after Iraqis fired anti-aircraft artillery from sites north of Mosul, the Germany-based US European Command said in a statement, cited by AFP.
The jets returned safely to their base in Incirlik in Turkey's southern province of Adana, the statement added.
The United States, Britain, and France set up "no-fly zones" after the Gulf War. France left the coalition after the US and Britain bombed Iraq in December, 1998.
The UN has not authorized the no-fly zones, which are ostensibly there to prevent Iraqi attacks on Kurdish and Shiite Muslim minorities.
Iraq has from the beginning said the no-fly zones are illegal because no Security Council resolution authorizes them, and because Iraq did not give up any territory in ceasefire agreements.
The US and UK maintain their warplanes at Incirlik airbase in Turkey, which in the last decade has carried out a large-scale war to maintain control over its own sizeable Kurdish minority – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
