US Warplanes in Missile Attack on Iraqi Oil Refinery

Residents in Basra, southern Iraq, claim that US warplanes launched two missiles at an oil refinery on Sunday, killing at least eight people and injuring “around 20”. The offices of the oil-for-food programme were destroyed.

Passers-by were showered with splinters of glass as US warplanes inexplicably launched two missiles at a civilian target in Basra, a state-owned oil refinery. The eye-witness reports have not been confirmed by the Pentagon, which denies any knowledge of the incident.

Being true, this attack is a monstrous act of piracy, a criminal and murderous intrusion into the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, a violation of international law and of the rights of Iraq as a State, a heinous provocation at a time when diplomacy is the order of the day in the rest of the international community.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru