BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said Western aircraft had attacked civilian targets in the north of the country on Sunday before they were driven off by Iraqi ground defenses.

``Ten hostile formations of the enemy crows (planes) carried out 20 sorties from Turkish airspace...and flew over the provinces of Duhok, Arbil and Nineveh, attacking infrastructure and civilian installations,'' the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) quoted a military spokesman as saying.

The spokesman said Iraqi ground defenses challenged the planes and ``forced them leave our airspace into the bases of blasphemy and aggression in Turkey.'' There was no mention of casualties.

The U.S. European Command based in Germany said an attack took place after Western aircraft were fired upon.

``The Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft artillery from a site west of Bashiqah while Operation Northern Watch aircraft conducted routine enforcement of the Northern No-Fly Zone,'' it said in a statement.

``Coalition aircraft responded to the Iraqi attacks by dropping ordnance on elements of the Iraqi integrated air defense system,''

U.S. and British planes patrol no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq established after the war.

Washington and London say they imposed the zones, which the Baghdad government does not recognize, to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from attacks by Iraqi forces.

Western aircraft bombed northern Iraq on Tuesday in the latest of a long series of clashes in the disputed zone.