WAR IN IRAQ /

U.S. doubles air attacks in Iraq

Staff and agencies
05 June, 2007

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 6 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - Four years into the war that opened with "shock and awe," U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq , dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago.

It also reflects increased availability of planes from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. And it appears to be accompanied by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.

"Air operations over Iraq have ratcheted up significantly, in the number of sorties, the number of hours (in the air)," said Col. Joe Guastella, Air Force operations chief for the region. "It has a lot to do with increased pressure on the enemy by MNC-I" — the Multinational Corps-Iraq — "combined with more carriers."
A second U.S. Navy U.S. Navy aircraft carrier on station since February in the Persian Gulf has added some 80 warplanes to the U.S. air arsenal in the region.

The rate of such reported civilian deaths appeared to climb steadily through 2006, the group reports, averaging just a few a month in early 2006, hitting some 40 a month by year‘s end, and averaging more than 50 a month so far this year.
The U.S. military itself says it doesn‘t track civilian casualties.
Air Force figures show that, after the thousands of bombs and missiles used in the 2003 "shock and awe" invasion, U.S. airpower settled down to a slow bombing pace: 285 munitions dropped in 2004, 404 in 2005 and 229 in 2006, totals that don‘t include warplanes‘ often-devastating 20mm and 30mm cannon or rocket fire, or Marine Corps aircraft.
Examples of attacks, as reported in the Air Force‘s daily summary:

_The day before, an F-16 dropped a similar bomb on "an inaccessible building being used by insurgents" near Samarra, north of Baghdad, with "good effects."
Police and other Iraqi sources sometimes report civilian casualties in such airstrikes that are not reflected in the official U.S. accounts.

Air Force Col. Gary Crowder, deputy director of the regional air operations center, said such casualties "pale in comparison" with civilian casualties from ground combat.
"In Iraq, we minimize our deployment of air-delivered weapons in populated areas," he said.

Crowder, Guastella and Cox were interviewed outside Iraq at the regional U.S. air headquarters. Journalists are allowed to visit that low-profile base on condition they don‘t disclose its location, a politically sensitive matter to the host country.
Air attacks in Iraq are still relatively low compared with the numbers of weapons dropped in Afghanistan — 929 this year as of May 15.