U.S. warplanes bomb southern Iraq

Wednesday March 19, U.S. warplanes bomb southern Iraq By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With war looming, U.S. warplanes have bombed military targets in southern Iraq and dropped nearly 2 million warning leaflets into the area, the U.S. military says.

The bombs were dropped in a southern "no-fly" zone in response to Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, a Navy admiral said on Wednesday.

Rear Adm. John Kelly said on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf that the latest of dozens of such recent strikes in no-fly zones of northern and southern Iraq were against "command and control" targets in response to attempts on Tuesday to shoot down U.S. and British aircraft.

The leaflets dropped on 29 military and civilian sites in southern Iraq warned Iraqi civilians to stay away from military targets and urged Iraq's forces to surrender without a fight in any invasion, a U.S. military announcement from the region said.

The drops brought to more than 17 million the number of leaflets scattered in recent months.

U.S. President George W. Bush said in a televised address on Monday night that Saddam and his sons had to get out of Iraq by 8 p.m. EST (1:00 a.m. on Thursday British time) or the United States would strike at a time of its own choosing. Saddam spurned the warning on Tuesday.

As the bombs and leaflets again fell on Iraq, more than 280,000 U.S. and British troops along with dozens of missile-carrying warships and up to 1,000 aircraft were arrayed in the Gulf region facing Iraq.

TROOPS MASSED NEAR IRAQ BORDER

Of those, nearly 175,000 American and British troops were in northern Kuwait awaiting any order to sweep northward into Iraq to depose Saddam and rid the country of what Washington charges are huge stockpiles of deadly chemical and biological weapons. Iraq denies that charge.

Large numbers of those forces in Kuwait on Wednesday morning moved into the demilitarised zone that straddles the Iraq-Kuwait border. The zone extends 3 miles (5 km) into Kuwait and 6 miles (10 km) into Iraq.

U.S. defence officials and private analysts say one of the first objectives of an invasion would be to overwhelm regular army units and take Basra, about 40 miles (65 km) from the Kuwait border.

Basra is 340 miles (550 km) southeast of Baghdad.

Wednesday's military announcement said that some of the newly dropped messages stressed that U.S.-led forces did not wish to harm innocent Iraqis. One message informed Iraqi citizens they could be the victims if Saddam used chemical weapons. Another told the Iraqi military to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction or burning oil fields.

"We are also continuing to broadcast radio messages to the region," said a Pentagon official, referring to broadcasts from C-130 military Special Operations aircraft.

The purpose of the psychological warfare campaign, according to officials in Washington, is in large measure to persuade Iraqi forces in the south to stand aside when U.S.-led forces are expected to advance from Kuwait toward the oil fields around Basra en route to Baghdad.

Instructions to Iraqi forces have been specific, including telling them to leave their tanks with their turrets reversed and to abandon vehicles in the open while returning to barracks.