By
The Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated yesterday against the latest U.S.-British airstrikes, as state-run Iraqi television showed homes and shops damaged in the raids.
More than 2,000 people - including Deputy Foreign Minister Nabil Najim - protested in the center of the capital, and at least 1,000 others gathered across the city near the offices of the ruling al-Baath party.
"This dangerous aggression shows how much the Americans and Britons hate Iraqis and do not respect any international law," Najim told the demonstrators. "This aggression must be condemned."
Popular Syrian film star Raghda, who flew to Baghdad Saturday night to show her solidarity with the Iraqis, also addressed the crowd. "Nothing could stop me from coming here," she said. "The people of Iraq and children of Iraq are in my heart."
The United States and Britain said their raid Friday night - the largest in two years - struck air defense sites around Baghdad that had helped improve Iraqi targeting of allied planes patrolling a southern no-fly zone.
Iraq's state-run satellite station repeatedly broadcast footage of civilian buildings damaged at two sites targeted in the airstrikes, which killed two people and injured at least 20.
The images showed two badly damaged homes in the farming village of al-Hafriya, 25 miles south of Baghdad, where the explosion from a missile that hit the outskirts of town shattered windows and tore off doors. Two stores, for agricultural supplies and automotive spare parts, suffered similar damages.
"This is an agricultural area, and there are no military installations here," Fawzia Ibrahim, a resident of one of the damaged houses, told the TV station, questioning why the town was targeted.
In al-Rashdiya, 12 miles north of the capital, a witness said the missile had landed in a field of mud, softening the explosion. Foreign media have not been allowed access to the bombed sites.
Amid strong criticism of the raids by U.S. allies in the Middle East and NATO, Britain said yesterday it would keep up the pressure on Iraq, insisting enforcement of the no-fly zones in the north and south was necessary to protect Kurds and Shiites in those areas.
"Some of those who ask why we do it would be the very people who would be asking why are we not doing more if we were to abandon it and Saddam was to go back to bombing his own people from the air," Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the British Broadcasting Corp.
Iraqi media continued attacking the United States and Britain for the airstrikes.
"The little Bush administration tried to show that it is strong and able to do what the former Clinton administration could not do," said al-Thawra daily in its front page editorial yesterday. "If little Bush considers his aggression a message to Iraq, then we have the answer, which is the formation of al-Quds (Jerusalem) Army ... ready for jihad (holy war) and liberating Palestine."
Another newspaper, al-Qadissiya, called the United States and Britain "fools" in a front-page editorial and said: "The Americans and the Zionists and their agents will not harvest but failure, disappointment and eternal defeat."
The Arab world continued to criticize the attack, with Syria's state-run al-Thawra newspaper calling it a "provocative step that implies a lot of disregard of the Iraqi people's dignity and life. It is a dangerous precedent in international relations."
A joint Libyan-Tunisian statement issued in Libya yesterday called for lifting the sanctions imposed on Iraq and for the "immediate cessation to all acts of aggression against (the Iraqi people)."
