Baghdad: US aircraft on October 10 attacked the international airport at Basra in Southern Iraq, the third strike in two weeks, destroying its radar system, Iraq announced.

"The evil American crows have struck and destroyed the civilian radar system and damaged the terminal halls," a transport ministry spokesman told the official satellite television channel.

Iraq said the airport's civilian radar system was first destroyed in a US raid on September 25.

Pentagon officials said the target on that occasion was a mobile air defence radar that had been targeting US and British aircraft.

Baghdad then announced on September 29 that US aircraft again attacked the airport, destroying the civilian radar system anew, a charge that went unanswered in Washington.

Basra airport had also been bombed in August 2001 by US and British forces.

Almost daily skirmishes are reported in "no-fly" zones enforced by US and British warplanes over Northern and Southern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

An Iraqi military spokesman said that four Iraqis were killed and 10 wounded when US and British warplanes bombed Nineveh province, 400 km North of Baghdad.

Iraq, which now faces the threat of a US military offensive aimed at ousting the regime of President Saddam Hussein, has never recognised the air exclusion zones, which are not sanctioned by any UN resolution.