TEL AVIV, Aug 10: Israel is building a second state-of-the-art anti-missile battery in the centre of the country to fend off Iraqi attacks in the event of a US assault on Baghdad, Israeli military sources said on Friday.

The Arrow-2 system, developed by Israel in conjunction with its guardian ally the United States, was first deployed over the past three years in the southern Negev desert, the sources said.

The Israeli army said a new battery about 10kms from the central town of Hadera was “for training purposes”, but the sources said it already had operational capability.

A possible US attack on Iraq as part of Washington’s “war on terrorism” declared after the September 11 suicide hijackings, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s defiant public statements, have heightened Israeli concerns over a repeat of the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraqi Scud missiles rained on the Jewish state.

“We must be prepared at all times to deal with the threat that we face from the east, the Iraqi threat,” Israeli cabinet minister Matan Vilnai, an ex-deputy chief of staff, told Army Radio.

US-made Patriot anti-missile systems deployed near Israeli towns intercepted some of the Scuds in 1991, but at least 30 of the Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles got through.

Those Scuds had conventional explosive warheads, but according to Israeli officials the Scuds Iraq has left could this time be fired with chemical or biological payloads.

Arrow-2 missiles can fly at nine times the speed of sound to intercept hostile warheads as far as 50 km away from their targets, according to a report by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“The situation now is that he (Saddam) has a few isolated missiles, if any, and therefore the effect of the Arrow is greater,” Dan Shomron, Israel’s chief of staff during the Gulf War, told Israel Radio.—Reuters