BAGHDAD, Dec 1: Four people were killed and 27 injured on Sunday when US and British warplanes struck civilian installations in southern Iraq.

“Four citizens were killed and 27 injured when enemy warplanes bombed civilian and services installations” in Basra and two other southern provinces, a military spokesman was quoted by the INA news agency as saying.

Residents of Basra said at least eight people were killed and 20 injured when Western warplanes bombed the premises of the Southern Oil Company.

Two rockets hit the compound in the morning, killing at least eight people and wounding around 20, they said. A large number of passers-by were also slightly injured by flying glass.

Between 600 and 700 employees were in the premises at the time of the raid on Basra, 560 kilometres south of Baghdad.

The military spokesman said coalition aircraft raided the provinces of Basra, Zi Qar, 375 kilometres south of Baghdad, and Al Kut, 170kms south of the capital.

The planes staged 62 “armed sorties” over a dozen locations in the south, the spokesman said.

“Iraqi missile batteries and ground defences confronted the warplanes, forcing them to flee to their bases in Kuwait,” he said.

“The American and British criminals have thus perpetrated another ugly crime to be added to their ongoing crimes against the brave and steadfast people of Iraq,” the spokesman added.

The US Central Command said coalition warplanes had bombed an Iraqi air defence site on Sunday in response to Iraqi anti-aircraft fire against the US and British aircraft.

“Operation Southern Watch coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons today to target Iraqi air defence facilities,” 274 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, according to a statement released from command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, outside Tampa, in the southern US state of Florida.

Sunday’s strikes come as UN experts are searching Iraq for forbidden arms amid US and British charges that it concealed key parts of its weapons of mass destruction programmes from the previous UN mission, a claim denied by Baghdad.—AFP