TEHRAN, March 23: Iran warned on Sunday that its army would “react” if there were further violations of its airspace by US and British warplanes.

“Our soldiers on the border are on full alert... If they observe the slightest violation of Iranian airspace or at the border they will certainly react,” said Interior Minister Abdolvahed Musavi-Lari.

Tehran, officially neutral in the US-led war, has condemned what it says have been repeated violations of its airspace by coalition planes.

An interior ministry spokesman said earlier that a missile that injured three Iranians when it landed on a petrochemical depot at Abadan, near the border with Iraq, was fired by a US or British warplane.

Iranian radar had detected no Iraqi planes in the sky at the time, and southern Iraq has been off-limits to Baghdad’s planes since 1991, the spokesman said.

Witnesses also described the aircraft as belonging to the coalition, he said.

But the interior minister also said at least one of a series of missiles that have hit Iranian territory since Britain and the United States attacked Iraq last week was Iraqi and not Western.

He said the foreign ministry had summoned Iraq’s charge d’affaires here to lodge a formal protest.

In London, a British defence ministry spokeswoman said Iraq was probably responsible for stray missiles which landed in Iranian territory during the weekend.

“Given the disposition of forces it’s most likely that this incident was the result of Iraqi action, that’s currently the situation,” she said.

The United States on Saturday informed Tehran that an investigation was under way into reports that two Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at Iraq had veered off course and landed in Iran.

The State Department said the message had been passed to Tehran through Swiss diplomats — the usual channel for US-Iranian communications — after it got a complaint from Iran through the same channel on Friday.—AFP