Iraq said at least 11 people died and 59 were injured, including women and children, in "savage" air raids yesterday, while the commander of US forces in the Gulf admitted that a US missile may have gone astray, hitting a residential area in Basra. "It's possible that we did have a missile that didn't perform as expected," Gen Anthony Zinni said, but he laid the blame for civilian casualties on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who he said has tripled his surface-to-air missile batteries in southern Iraq in a bid to shoot down US warplanes.
Iraq linked the escalation to the Arab League's failure, at a foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo on Sunday, to condemn the Desert Fox air war waged by Washington and London in December.
"Eleven civilians were killed and 59 others injured in the American attacks," Basra's governor, Gen Ahmed Ibrahim Hammash told reporters.
The sites hit included "the al-Jumhuriya district, the Abu Hassib sector, a village in the Zubair region, a site near the international airport of Basra and the Rumeila oilfield," near the Kuwaiti border, he said.
The overcrowded area of Al-Jumhuriya near the city of Basra, 300 miles from the Iraqi capital, was blacked out last night due to a power cut following the attacks. In Basra, journalists saw 50 houses badly damaged and four others completely destroyed. Yesterday's sustained raids were the first reported since the Desert Fox air war last month.
"Civilians, children, women and elderly people" were among the casualties, the official Iraqi news agency, INA, said.
Iraq made no mention of any incidents in the north, but the Pentagon said its warplanes had struck air defences at six sites in northern as well as southern Iraq. Britain denied any involvement.
The US Central Command said US warplanes fired laser-guided bombs at two missile sites in the southern no-fly zone after four Iraqi jets flew "south of the 33rd parallel . . . and (after) ground fire from anti-aircraft artillery."
A Pentagon official said another attack occurred in the northern no-fly zone where two US fighters dropped laser-guided bombs on an anti-aircraft gun that opened fire.
A further US jet was illuminated by radar from an Iraqi surface to air missile battery in the northern zone and fired a high speed anti-radiation missile (HARM) at the site.
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tareq Aziz, condemned the US attack on Basra and accused Saudi Arabia and Kuwait of aiding the attack. "It is a criminal act which follows the cowardly aggression led by the United States and Britain against Iraq, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait," he said in a statement to INA news agency.
The Iraqi Information Minister, Mr Abdel Ghafour, said the attacks were the direct result of the Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo on Sunday. Their meeting's final statement was "a green light to the Americans and British to attack," he said.
The resolution, which was toned down amid Iraqi protests, called for Baghdad "to take the necessary steps to prove its good intentions towards Kuwait and neighbouring countries by words and deeds".
The Iraqi Foreign Minister, Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, stormed out of the meeting before the amendments, protesting that the resolution was "aimed at covering up new US and British attacks on Iraq".
Since December, US warplanes have fired missiles at several air defence sites in the southern and northern zones, in retaliation for Iraqi efforts to shoot down patrolling US and British jets. Baghdad has said the clashes killed four Iraqi soldiers on December 28th and an Iraqi farmer on December 30th.
The no-fly zones, imposed after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Iraq's Kurdish and Shia Muslim populations, extend north of the 36th parallel and up to the 33rd parallel in the south, to the outskirts of Baghdad.
Iraq has never recognised the zones, which are not directly covered by a UN resolution, and has challenged overflights by the United States and Britain since the four-day Desert Fox assault.
On the ground, Iraq is stepping up military deployment in the south to defend itself in case of attack but not to threaten Kuwait, a senior southern official announced late on Sunday.