Allied aircraft 'kill four in missile attack on Iraq'

Iraq accused the US and Britain of killing four people and injuring 10 others in a raid yesterday. The claims came as as UN weapons inspectors searched for crop-spraying aircraft allegedly capable of spreading chemical and biological weapons.

The missile attack near Basra, in the no-fly zone in the south, hit a plant involved in Iraq's oil-for-food programme, under UN auspices, according to Iraqi officials. The US Central Command at Tampa, Florida, said aircraft had attacked a communications facility and air defences in the northern no-fly zone after Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery opened fire. A spokesman said there was "nothing on" any incident near Basra.

Iraq claims eight people have been killed by Allied planes in the last month, seven of them two days before the return of the UN inspectors.

A team from Unmovic (the UN monitoring and verification commission) visited a disused airfield of Khan Bani Sa'ad yesterday. It was used in the past for the successful testing of a device called the Zubaidy, which disperses toxic bacteria from helicopters. The inspectors refused to discuss their findings.