US says Iraqi bombs missed targets

The United States has admitted that most of the precision-guided bombs dropped by American planes during last week's raid on Iraq missed their targets.

The majority of the twenty five bombs dropped veered away from their intended destinations and the Pentagon is now checking to see if this might have been due to a software error.

The Pentagon insists that other weapons used against Iraqi air defences were much more successful.

The BBC Defence correspondent says the US experience underlines the fallibility of even the most modern precision-guided weapons.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service