The US and Britain have stepped up significantly their military strikes against Iraqi targets, prompting Baghdad to claim that six civilians were killed and 15 others wounded yesterday in air raids.
An Iraqi military spokesman said that civilian sites near the southern city of Basra had been targeted, while at the same time acknowledging that Iraqi anti-aircraft gun batteries had opened fire on aircraft in the southern no-fly zone.
US defence officials said at the weekend that Washington had extended the targets being attacked by air patrols in no-fly zones to include weapons which could hinder a ground invasion.
Two no-fly zones, one in the south, the other in the north, were set up at the end of the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds in the north and Shia Muslims in the south from the regime of President Saddam Hussein.
American and British jets patrol the zones, which Saddam does not recognise enforcing a ban on Iraqi military aircraft and hitting anti-aircraft batteries.
Both Britain and the US yesterday acknowledged carrying out raids near Basra but insisted their targets were military and not civilian.
They said they had responded to attack from the ground.
Capt Frank Thorp, chief media spokesman for Central Command forward headquarters in Qatar, said: "These targets, contrary to reports of the Iraqi News Agency, were not civilian targets. It was an air defence facility. This is another example of the Iraq propaganda machine spitting out absolute untruths."
A British Defence Ministry spokeswoman said Britain would look into the Iraqi allegations.
"This is one of the stronger allegations they have made so we are looking into it," she said. "The early indications are that these reports are probably not accurate."