TEHRAN, 24 March 2003 — A missile that injured three Iranians when it landed on a petrochemical depot at Abadan, near the border with Iraq, was fired by a US and British warplane, Tehran’s Interior Ministry said yesterday.
“We are sure it was American or British,” ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khamjani told AFP.
He quoted witnesses describing the aircraft concerned, adding that Iranian radar had detected no Iraqi planes in the sky at the time.
Earlier yesterday, Interior Minister Abdolvahed Musavi-Lari said at least one of a series of missiles that have hit Iranian territory since Britain and the United States attacked Iraq last week was Iraqi and not Western.
“Our investigating experts found that the missile which hit Sardasht (in Iran’s western Kordestan province) may have been made in Iraq,” Musavi-Lari told the official IRNA news agency.
He said the Foreign Ministry had summoned Iraq’s charge d’affaires here to lodge a formal protest.
Iran was hit by two coalition rockets on Saturday, an Iranian commander said. Abadan city Governor Jamal Alemi said three people, including a security guard, were hurt when a bomb or missile fell on the petrochemical depot in Abadan on Friday.
Britain insisted yesterday that the ordnance was probably Iraqi. “Given the disposition of forces it’s most likely that this incident was the result of Iraqi action,” a Defense Ministry spokeswoman in London said.
Iran, which has adopted a neutral stance over the US-led war on Iraq, has also condemned what it says have been repeated violations of its airspace by British and US warplanes.
The United States on Saturday informed Iran that an investigation was under way into reports that two Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at Iraq had veered off course and landed in its territory.
The State Department said the message had been passed to Tehran through Swiss diplomats — the usual channel for US-Iranian communications — after it got a complaint from Iran through the same channel late Friday.
