Iraq claims air strikes kill 23 on football pitch

Iraqi sources reported yesterday that 23 people were killed and 11 injured when British and American aircraft bombed a football field near the northern city of Mosul. Western officials denied the raid had taken place.

Iraqi sources reported yesterday that 23 people were killed and 11 injured when British and American aircraft bombed a football field near the northern city of Mosul. Western officials denied the raid had taken place.

The death toll, if confirmed, would make the raid the bloodiest since Britain and the US launched its four-day series of attacks, dubbed "Desert Fox", across Iraq at the end of 1998. Since then, according to Iraqi estimates, Western raids have killed nearly 300 civilians.

"The raids, which targeted a football field, martyred 23 citizens and wounded 11 others who were playing football," according to a report by the Iraqi News Agency. The attack allegedly occurred in the Talafar district, outside Mosul.

The area is just inside the northern no-fly zone. Western planes regularly patrol this and a southern no-fly zone set up by the allies after the 1991 Gulf War. They are designed to protect Kurdish dissidents in the north and anti-Baghdad Shia Muslims in the south.

Since Iraq vowed late in 1998 to challenge the zones, clashes have become more frequent. Western planes have counter-attacked with air-to-ground weapons whenever they have been threatened. Seeking always to break the coalition of Western allies against it, Iraq has depicted the raids as a systematic assassination of innocent civilians.

On Tuesday, Western defence officials insist that, while aircraft had been inside the northern no-fly zone, no bombs were dropped. "It is an absolutely false report," noted Major Edward Loomis, a spokesman for the US European Command in Stuttgart.

In London, the Ministry of Defence issued a similar denial. "If this refers to yesterday [Tuesday] then there is no truth in this," a spokesman said. "We did not drop any weapons yesterday ­ and that goes for the British and Americans."

Iraq, nonetheless, seized on the report of the raid to bolster its claims that the no-fly zones are illegal and unfair. "Those bombings continue on an almost daily basis in violation of international law and in violation of Iraqi sovereignty," the country's deputy foreign minister, Nizar Hamdoon, said yesterday during a visit to Norway.

This latest diplomatic confrontation comes as Iraq is trying to muster opposition in the United Nations Security Council to a planned modification of the sanctions that have been imposed since 1990. Britain and the US are seeking agreement soon on a proposal to tighten controls on all military-related imports by Iraq, but to ease sanctions on all civilian imports into the country.

"We have lost faith in the Security Council," said Mr Hamdoon, himself a former ambassador to the UN. "Sanctions will never be lifted by the United States and Britain because they are politically motivated against the government in Baghdad."