US launches airstrikes in Iraq

by Rob Peters | March 28, 2008 at 06:04 pm

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British and American planes have been conducting surveillance runs in the Basra area since fighting began, but this is the first time they've been used to attack, apparently. Is further involvement a good thing?

BAGHDAD — The American military conducted airstrikes to back up stalled Iraqi forces in Basra and battle Shiite militias in Baghdad as continued violence and political infighting worsened the prospects for any timely reconciliation among Iraq’s warring factions.

Although American officials have emphasized that the campaign in the southern port city of Basra is an Iraqi-led operation, the Iraqi forces have so far failed to wrest control of neighborhoods in Basra from Shiite militias and asked the Americans and British for help. The Iraqi military has no air support. In Baghdad, American helicopters exchanged fire with Mahdi Army militia members in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, and rockets crashed into the office of Iraq’s Sunni vice president in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

The operation is deepening the country’s sectarian and political fissures, ones that American military officials repeatedly urged Iraqi leaders to address during the past months of decreased attacks.

At the same time, the surge in violence around the country has underscored the fragility of the security gains of recent months. Just a few weeks ago, many people in Baghdad were feeling confident enough to venture out to restaurants, visit friends and have some sense that they might make it to work safely each morning. But after intense clashes between Mahdi Army fighters and Iraqi and American forces on Thursday, the city is now under a strict curfew, its streets and markets deserted, its citizens cowering in their houses, listening for the boom of mortar rounds and the crackle of gunfire.

F-18 fighter jets dropped cannon rounds on a militia stronghold and on a mortar team that was attacking Iraqi forces in Basra The airstrikes, one at 9 p.m. Thursday and a second after midnight, were made at the request of the Iraqi Army, said Maj. Tom Holloway, a spokesman for the British Army.

Major Holloway said that British and American planes had been conducting surveillance runs over Basra since the fighting began to support the Iraqi military, but that this was the first time they had entered active fighting.