Allied planes bombed "civilian installations" in the southern Zi Qar and Wasset provinces, the spokesman was quoted as saying.

No casualties were reported.

The planes made 52 sorties "before fleeing to their bases in Kuwait under Iraqi anti-aircraft and missile fire".

Almost daily clashes occur between Iraqi air defenses and US and British planes patrolling nothern and southern no-fly zones over Iraq.

Iraq does not recognize the air exclusion zones, which have been enforced since the end of the 1991 Gulf War without being explicitly sanctioned by a UN resolution.

Baghdad has also accused the US administration of seeking to use Security Council Resolution 1441, under which arms inspections resumed in Iraq in late November, as a cover for attack by claiming that Iraqi firing on coalition aircraft might put it in material breach of the resolution.

SPACE.WIRE