US warships and B-52 bombers pounded military targets in southern Iraq with cruise missiles yesterday in an operation codenamed "Desert Strike". It sparked a defiant response from President Saddam Hussein.
President Clinton said he ordered the dawn attack against air defence installations to "make Saddam pay a price for the latest act of brutality" against Kurds in northern Iraq.
Mr Clinton also announced the extension of the allied no-fly zone over southern Iraq and the suspension of an oil-for-food deal allowing Baghdad, under UN supervision, to resume oil sales to purchase humanitarian supplies.
Just hours after the US strike, Mr Saddam appeared on television to declare he no longer recognised the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq and ordered his troops to shoot down allied planes breaching Iraqi airspace.
Two warships in the Gulf and two B-52 bombers fired 27 cruise missiles at air defence sites in southern Iraq in a 45-minute operation, US officials said.
An Iraqi army statement said five people were killed and 19 wounded by the missiles, which it said hit civilian as well as military targets.
Mr Clinton said the allies were extending the southern no-fly zone, set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Shia Muslins, from the 32nd to the 33rd parallel. The expansion to the suburbs of Baghdad of the zone patrolled by US, French and British aircraft took effect at noon.
The US operation was in retaliation for Iraq's military offensive against Kurdish groups north of the 36th parallel, the border of the northern no-fly zone also set up in 1991 to protect the Kurds.
Air Force General Joseph Ralston said the missiles struck military targets south of the 33rd parallel and the raid was "effective." The attacks were aimed at knocking out missile sites, command and control installations and radar to reduce the risk to allied aircraft enforcing the expanded no-fly zone, Gen Ralston said.
Mr Clinton said the US had sought to inflict "very limited" damage in a move aimed at forcing Iraqi troops to withdraw from northern Iraq. He said reports on subsequent military movements were knot encouraging".
Asked about the possibility of a second attack, Mr Clinton said "it depends entirely on what Saddam does".
The US Defence Secretary, Mr William Perry, said Washington "reserves the right to conduct further military action" and described Mr Saddam as a danger to his neighbours, to the security and stability of the region, and to the flow of oil in the world."
Iraq and its Kurdish allies, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), launched a joint attack on the main Iraqi Kurdistan town of Arbil on Saturday, driving out the rival Kurdish group the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
The PUK leader Mr Jalal Talabani welcomed the US riposte as a courageous decision", while thousands of Iraqi Kurds were reported to have taken to the streets of Sulaymaniyah, the main PUK-held town, in celebration.
The PUK and KDP have controlled northern Iraq in defiance of Baghdad since the aftermath of the Gulf War, but their power-sharing agreement broke down in 1994 and more than 2,200 people have been killed in the ensuing conflict.