Iraq raids 'injured civilians'

Clearing away the wreckage at the Samawa warehouse

Iraq says US and British planes bombed a train station in southern Iraq on Saturday night wounding a number of civilians in a second night of raids.

The US Department of Defense said US warplanes hit two anti-aircraft sites on Saturday night in response to Iraqi fire.

Iraq had earlier said that two people had been killed and 19 injured on Friday night during an attack on the southern city of Samawa, about 270km south of Baghdad.

Civilian injuries have been reported

Correspondents say that Pentagon statements have not acknowledged these charges but they have stressed that Western forces tried to use precision weapons to spare civilians.

US and British warplanes regularly bomb Iraq while patrolling air exclusion zones in the north and south of the country, set up to protect opposition groups from the regime.

Rebuffal

These, however, were the first attacks for several weeks.

On Sunday, an official from the UK Ministry of Defence denied statements from the official Iraqi News Agency that allied jets hit a food ration distribution centre in Samawa, killing and injuring civilians.

"These were military sites. We do not target civilian areas," the spokesman said.

"We expect there were probably some military casualties. But we are very dubious when the Iraqis claim [that] there have been civilian casualties because in the past they have passed military casualties off as civilian ones."

'On the defensive'

Iraq says about 300 civilians have been killed in such attacks since the exclusions zones were set up.

The US and Britain accuse the Iraqis of placing anti-aircraft guns in civilian areas for cover.

According to analysts, the strategy is to keep President Saddam Hussain on the defensive until he can be overthrown.

The war of attrition goes on amid international indifference, but this air strike comes days after a controversial visit to Baghdad by the Venezualan leader, Hugo Chavez.

President Chavez defied the US policy of isolating Iraq and called for UN sanctions to be lifted.