American Warplanes Bomb Two Iraqi Sites

The two sites were between Baghdad and Al Kut, which is about 90 miles southeast of the capital, and between Al Kut and An Nasiriyah, about 170 miles southeast of Baghdad, Central Command said.
On Tuesday, American planes bombed mobile surface-to-surface missile equipment and a mobile surface-to-air missile launcher in southern Iraq near Basra, which is about 35 miles from the border with Kuwait. U.S. planes also hit three mobile surface-to-surface missile launchers in northern Iraq.
The multiple airstrikes come as U.S. and British troops are massing in Kuwait in preparation for a possible war to topple Saddam Hussein. Military officials say the surface-to-surface missiles threaten those troops and ones the United States wants to send to Turkey, Iraq’s northern neighbor.
All of the strikes were within the southern and northern no-fly zones, which were set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to keep Saddam’s military from attacking opposition Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south.
Saddam does not recognize the no-fly zones and his forces frequently shoot at the planes patrolling them. Iraq has never shot down a piloted plane in either zone.