WASHINGTON (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The Defense Department dismissed as baseless on Wednesday an Iraqi claim that it hit a coalition aircraft enforcing a ``no-fly'' zone in southern Iraq.
speaking for both the United States and Britain, which also patrols the exclusion zones in the north and south of Iraq, navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman claimed that Iraq has been known to make false claims in the past.
Baghdad said its anti-aircraft defenses had hit one of a group of Western planes patrolling the southern no-fly area.
``Brave Iraqi men in the missile forces hit one of the enemy's planes,'' the Iraqi News Agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.
The zones were set up 10 years ago to protect the areas' ethnic Kurdish and Shi'ite peoples after a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraq from Kuwait.