Four Iraqis wounded in US- British planes; Baghdad amnesty covered releasing 560 Arabs

The Iraqi weekly al-Zawra' said yesterday that the general amnesty issued by the Iraqi President by the end of October covered the release of 560 Arab detainees from 12 Arab states, with six of them that were sentenced to death.

The weekly which is issued by the Iraqi journalists union added that those who are governed under the general amnesty are distributed on 12 Arab states. They are 278 Egyptians; 63 Syrians; four Lebanese; 33 Palestinians; 79 Jordanians; one Yemeni; 86 Sudanese; 8 Saudis; 4 Moroccans and 3 Tunisians, one from Somalia and one from Arabistan.

The paper continued that those who were sentenced to death and also governed by the amnesty are from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Palestine, while women who are governed by the Amnesty are two from Egypt and other two women from Palestine.

On October 20, the Iraqi President issued two decisions in which he pardoned all Iraqi prisoners and Arabs held in the Iraqi jails with the exception of those who are arrested under charges of spying for Israel and the USA.

Meantime, an Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad said that four Iraqis were wounded in raids launched by American and British planes against civilians and service companies to the south of Iraq. The spokesman who was quoted by the Iraqi official news agency said that the "enemy planes bombarded our civil and service establishments in Waset province and the bombardment resulted in wounding four innocent citizens." The spokesman explained that several enemy formations coming from the Kuwaiti airspace, backed by AWACS plane from inside the Saudi Arabian airspace and one A-2 C plane from the Kuwaiti airspace carried out 26 armed sorties over several areas of southern Iraq.

He added that the Iraqi anti warplanes missiles intercepted these planes and "forced them to flee back to their bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait."