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 Posted Saturday, November 9, 2002


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 Al-Quds al-Arabi

London, Thursday, 28 November 2002.

 

Eric Mueller comments:

WE TRANSLATE here the first paragraphs of today's front page story from Al-Quds al-Arabi, a popular, independent Arabic-language paper issued in London. The article went on to discuss the UN weapons inspections with the same basic information that appeared in western accounts.

Though western dispatches mention the air-raid sirens, I didn't find any that speculated on the identity or purpose of the mystery aircraft that set them off.

As has been noted, however, nobody is willing to claim the plane, and this in itself must arouse suspicion..

Arabist Eric Mueller is this website's expert on Middle Eastern affairs.

Spy Plane in Baghdad Skies sets off the Sirens of War

Baghdad, London: al-Quds al-Arabi. -- For several minutes the residents of Baghdad thought yesterday that war had broken out when air raid sirens went off after the appearance of an unknown airplane flying at a high altitude in the skies over their city. It left behind a white trail before disappearing.

Iraqi anti-aircraft quickly targeted the plane. The Pentagon, however, denied that the plane was American. A spokesman for the UN inspectors also denied that the aircraft belonged to UNMOVIC, the inspection committee that officially began its work in Iraq yesterday. Military sources did not exclude the possibility that the airplane might be a craft specially designed for spying and aerial surveys, and that it was of the same type that appeared in the skies over Kabul before the beginning of the war against Afghanistan last year.

The military sources said that that type of aircraft is designed to monitor communications and to take pictures that have a high capacity for enlargement. These provide a gold mine of intelligence information at the stage of primary preparation for war.

Air raid sirens went off in the Iraqi capital city at about 9:30 a.m. yesterday (Wednesday, 06:30 GMT) after an unknown airplane appeared high in the sky. The sirens stopped about ten minutes after they went off.

Iraqi citizens saw a white trail about 100 meters in length to the west of Baghdad that was left by the airplane as it appeared to fly over an area being searched by the United Nations weapons inspectors yesterday morning (Wednesday, 27 November 2002.)

As regards the inspections themselves, Iraq successfully passed its first test yesterday. A United Nations spokesman declared in Baghdad that the UN inspectors completed their preliminary inspection work Wednesday without difficulty in two areas adjacent to Baghdad on the first day of their resumed mission.

 

The above news item is translated and reproduced without editing other than typographical
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