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Jul 22, 1998
03:45 PM PDT

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Voices in the Wilderness joins proponents of nonviolence and disarmament, worldwide, in deploring the June 30, 1998 U.S. missile attack on a surface-to-air missile base near Basra, in southern Iraq. As of this writing, the U.S. State Department's Office of Public Affairs will neither confirm nor deny that Iraqis were killed in the bombing of the radar base. There was no immediate report on whether the missile fired by the F-16 struck its target.

The bombing occurred, according to an AP report, after Iraqi military radar locked onto six planes, including four British warplanes, that were part of a patrol flying over the unofficially declared no-fly zone. The Pentagon said that firing a high-speed anti-radiation missile (HARM) is a standard operating procedure under these circumstances.

U.S. and British coalition aircraft were conducting "Operation Southern Watch," the name given to the deny-flight mission which the US and several of its allies uses to patrol the no-fly zone.

Beginning tomorrow, five Voices in the Wilderness members will engage in a different "Southern Watch" mission as they travel overland, to Baghdad and the southern port city of Basra. There they will witness civilian suffering caused by nearly eight years of murderous U.N./U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq. While the exact death toll is uncertain, it is beyond doubt that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, under the age of five, have died from malnutrition, epidemics of water-borne diseases, and a lack of basic medicines. U.N./U.S. sanctions, a silent continuation of the Gulf War, have killed more Iraqi children than all the deaths at Hiroshima or Nagasaki combined.

Our campaign has gone on record as opposing the development, use, storage and sale - in any country - of weapons, be they nuclear, chemical, biological or economic. We urge the U.S. and the U.N. to seek diplomatic channels and explore peaceful ways to resolve disputes. We believe that pursuing all available nonviolent means of resolving conflict will give Iraqi people, US people and communities worldwide far better hopes for safety and security in our troubled world.

06/30/'98 Voices in the Wilderness A Campaign to End the US/UN Economic Sanctions Against the People of Iraq 1460 West Carmen Ave. Chicago, IL 60640 ph:773-784-8065; f: 773-784-8837 email: kkelly@igc.apc.org