Iraq claims air strike hit civilian targets
Iraqi state media has confirmed reports of a US-British air strike in the west of the country, but says the target was a civilian facility.
The US military said American and British planes attacked an air defence command and control facility at a military airfield 240 miles southwest of Baghdad.
US Central Command said in Washington the strike responded to an Iraqi attack on allied aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone.
But Iraqi state newspapers quote an unidentified Iraqi military spokesman as saying enemy warplanes had attacked "civil and service installations" in the al-Rutbah area.
Iraq almost always accuses allied planes of attacking civilian targets.
"Our courageous anti-aircraft units confronted the jets and forced them to leave Iraqi skies," the Iraqi military spokesman said.
Al-Rutbah is the last big town in western Iraq before the Jordanian border.
US and British planes patrol no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq. The zones were set up in the early 1990s to provide a measure of protection to the Kurdish and Shiite Muslim communities against government forces.
Iraq does not recognise the zones. Its air defence units regularly challenge the allied patrols, provoking retaliatory strikes.
The strike occurred as the US government worked to mobilise domestic and foreign opinion of the need to act against President Saddam Hussein, whom it accuses of making weapons of mass destruction. Iraq, meanwhile, lobbied Arab and other nations against such a move.
