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Air strike condemned
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IRAQ vowed on Saturday to avenge US and British air strikes around Baghdad that underscored a tougher line by the new Bush Administration in the decade-old showdown between President Saddam Hussein and Washington.
Saddam and the rest of the country's top leadership discussed what “military measures" to take following Friday's air raids, the official INA news agency said.
Washington said the strikes on the suburbs of Baghdad, the first in two years, had knocked out air command and control centres after increased Iraqi threats to allied warplanes policing the skies of southern Iraq.
The strike, involving more than 50 planes, was the largest since a US-British air war in December 1998.
Bush, who called the attack a “routine mission", warned the Iraqi president that the United States expected him to abide by the ceasefire agreements that ended the 1991 Gulf War.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he would not hesitate to take further action against Baghdad if necessary.
International reactions were generally unfavourable.
“What the American military is in the process of doing, at the beginning of the new US administration, is a threat to international security," said Moscow defence ministry official General Leonid Ivashov.
China's Xinhua news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao as saying, “We condemn the air attacks of the United States and Great Britain on Iraq and express our deep regrets to the innocent civilians killed and injured."
France said the raids would make the search for a peaceful solution to the Iraqi problem more difficult.
The Cairo-based Arab League protested that the attack had “no justification".(SD-Agencies)
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