Britain and US triple patrols in no-fly zone

Britain and the United States have nearly tripled their air patrols over southern Iraq as they seek to keep Baghdad's air defences off balance.

Several hundred sorties a day are now being flown over southern Iraq, including F-16 and other warplanes as well as surveillance, refuelling and other support aircraft. While attacks are made on missile positions, air defence posts and communications links in the southern no-fly zone, a senior Pentagon official said yesterday that the sharp rise in flights was partly aimed at disguising the start of the air war.

General Tommy Franks, the commander of Allied forces in the Gulf, is establishing an irregular pattern of flights over invasion routes in the south, making it more difficult for Iraq's air defenders to detect a shift from patrols under the decade-old no-fly regime to full-scale attacks.

Yesterday also saw a rare attack on western Iraq, from where it would be possible for Saddam Hussein's regime to launch Scud attacks against Israel. General Franks's Central Command said coalition aircraft bombed a mobile surface-to-air missile system and an anti-aircraft artillery site about 240 miles west of Baghdad, after Iraqi forces moved the missiles below the 33rd parallel into the southern no-fly zone. Iraq said three civilians were killed in the latest round of coalition raids.

* An American official accused Iraq yesterday of acquiring military uniforms "identical down to the last detail" to those worn by US and British forces, with the intention of using them to shift blame for atrocities.

Jim Wilkinson, director of strategic communication at US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said Saddam Hussein had ordered procurement of the uniforms. He said: "Saddam would issue these uniforms to his Fedayeen Saddam troops [a paramilitary force of 15,000] who would wear them when conducting reprisals against the Iraqi people and blame the Allies for those actions."