BAGHDAD (AFP) — More than 8,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in
 U.S.-led air and missile strikes during the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait,
 Iraq's ruling Baath party said Sunday.

 The party's daily, Al Thawra, said U.S. and British air raids on civilian
 targets during the six-week conflict killed 8,243 civilians, including 2,010
 women and 520 children under the age of four.

 The death toll was published on the anniversary of a U.S. strike on Al
 Amriya bomb shelter in Baghdad that Iraqi authorities said killed 403
 civilians in February 1991.

 Iraqi leaders laid wreaths at a Baghdad martyrs' monument as a 21-gun
 salute sounded in the capital and other cities around the country.

 “The continuation of U.S. raids on civilian targets shows that the United
 States is carrying on its aggression against Iraq nine years after the end of the
 war,” said Al Jumhuriya, another official daily.

 According to an AFP toll compiled from official Iraqi reports, a total of 159
 people have died since December 1998 in U.S. and British attacks in no-fly
 zones over southern and northern Iraq.

 Another 2,440 civilians have been killed and 7,032 injured in accidental
 explosions of bombs dating back to the Gulf War, when Iraqi occupation
 forces were driven out of Kuwait, an Iraqi weekly reported in January.