In an article featured in the Washington Post, Lt. Gen. Yassin Jassem, spokesperson for Iraq's air defense command, said that of those killed more than 200 were civilians. The article described the fate of Omran Harbi Juwair, "caught in the wrong place at the wrong time." Juwair, 13, was watching over his family's flock of sheep when a missile landed 200 yards from the village of Toq al-Ghazalat, spewing shrapnel which killed him instantly. Many of the bombings are in rural areas, close to villages or grazing grounds shepherds use for raising sheep, with no signs of any military target present.

A recent UN survey confirmed Iraqi estimates that the number of those killed by imperialist air assaults averages one civilian killed every other day.

Casualties occur not only from the direct impact of bombs, but also from air strike debris, like unexploded pieces of munitions spit out by bombs and missiles from U.S. aircraft. Unexploded bomb fragments left from air assaults near the village of Rihaniyah killed three youths and injured two others May 28.

Washington and its imperialist allies have imposed "no-fly zones" over 60 percent of the country. In 1991, a northern zone was established by the U.S. government, followed by a southern zone established in 1992. In 1996, the Clinton administration expanded the southern zone to the outskirts of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.

The government in France has said it will freeze its participation in enforcing the "no-fly zones," given the rising number of civilians killed by the bombings.

U.S. imperialists try to justify the "no-fly zones," a blatant attack on Iraq's sovereignty, as necessary to defend the Iraqi people. For example, Richard Boucher, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said, "Since the no-flight zones were established, they have succeeded in preventing the Iraqi regime from using air power to threaten citizens in the south and the north, as they have done in the past. The U.S. government also claims the Iraqi government has placed antiaircraft equipment near towns and villages to increase the possibility of civilian casualties during retaliatory strikes.

From bases in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and from aircraft carriers, U.S. forces alone have carried out 280,000 sorties, the term used for each flight by a warplane, since 1991. The Clinton administration carried out an intensified bombing campaign in December 1998, after the Iraq government refused to permit U.S.-led "inspectors" to snoop around sites on the pretext of looking for "weapons of mass destruction." These provocative raids were imposed in 1991 after the Iraqi surrender to imperialist forces. A draconian economic embargo has been in place since 1990.  
 
 
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