U.S. Jets Again Fire on Iraqi Targets

WASHINGTON —  Two U.S. warplanes fired on suspected Iraqi missile sites in what has become an escalating game of cat-and-mouse, the Pentagon said Thursday.

The separate incidents occurred an estimated 80 miles into the “no-fly” zone imposed over southern Iraq after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The U.S. planes were unharmed. Damage to the Iraqi targets was unknown, the Pentagon said.

A senior Pentagon official later suggested the pilots may have fired on ground radar that they mistook for more lethal tracking radar coming from anti-missile sites. The ground radar is not threatening to aircraft.

In Baghdad, the Iraqi government denied that anything had happened. “We find no explanation for such a strange statement by the American Defense Department,” an official spokesman said.

Last Sunday, after U.S. pilots reported a similar incident, Iraq said they must have been hallucinating.

U.S.-Iraqi tensions have been rising since a June 27 U.S. missile strike on an Iraqi intelligence complex in retaliation for an alleged Iraqi plot to kill former President George Bush.