Seventeen cruise missiles were fired from four ships in a mop-up operation ordered by US President Bill Clinton, officials said. The mission was intended to destroy Iraq's ability to attack aircraft enforcing an expanded no-fly zone.
Iraq said one person was killed and seven were wounded.
The second wave was aimed at targets in southern Iraq not destroyed in an attack by 27 missiles on Tuesday which Baghdad said killed five people and wounded 19, including civilians.
Saddam on Tuesday vowed to resist the attacks and Iraq's official newspapers, including Babel which is run by Saddam's eldest son Uday, reiterated yesterday that Baghdad would ignore restrictions on Iraqi flights.
Saddam met air defence commanders yesterday, the Iraqi News Agency reported.
US Air Force General Joseph Ralston, deputy chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that US, British and French aircraft began patrolling the new no-fly zone in southern Iraq in an operation called Southern Watch at noon, Iraqi time (0800 GMT).We noted no violations, Ralston said.
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A Western military source said Iraq flew some 30 planes, including Russian MiG and Sukhoi jets, from the south, shortly before the enforcement of the extended no-fly zone.
The US decided on Tuesday to extend the limit of the air exclusion zone in southern Iraq to the 33rd parallel, on the outskirts of Baghdad, from the 32nd parallel where it was fixed after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.
Expansion of the zone would sharply curb Iraqi air power and hand America's oil-rich Gulf allies valuable extra warning time of potential trouble from Baghdad, analysts said. Clinton ordered the attacks in retaliation for Iraq's military offensive in support of one Kurdish faction against a rival Kurdish rebel group in northern Iraq.
A spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which was driven out of the city of Arbil by combined Iraqi-Kurdish forces on Saturday, said Iraqi troops had resumed shelling its positions near the northern town of Chamchamal and the main road leading to the PUK stronghold of Sulaimaniya. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the report. Iraq said at the weekend it was pulling its forces out of Kurdish areas of northern Iraq but US officials doubted it.
World markets reacted calmly to the second wave of missile strikes, which briefly boosted oil prices in Asia. In Europe, shares moved higher while the dollar was steady and gold lower.
Criticism of the US missile attacks mounted, however.
The Russian government called on the United States to stop using force in Iraq and accused Washington of placing itself above the United Nations Security Council. Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov said the US strikes could lead to catastrophic consequences.
France, a US Gulf War ally, called for new negotiations to ensure that a UN resolution allowing Iraq to use the proceeds of oil sales for food and medical supplies could come into force as soon as possible.
The United States has also hit at Iraq's already crippled economy, saying Baghdad would not be able to export oil for some time, putting on hold a UN oil-for-food plan that would have allowed Iraqi crude onto the world market within weeks for the first time since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The European Union postponed issuing a joint statement, underlining the division in Europe over the American action, EU diplomats said in Brussels.
They said Britain had pushed at a meeting of senior officials on Tuesday for a strong statement of support for the US action but that others, notably France, had resisted.
Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani criticised the United States, saying: The Americans are moving wrong in Iraq and the Iraqis have given them the pretext.
Syria, another neighbour of Iraq, warned Washington that further raids could have unpredictable consequences.
Britain is one of the few countries to offer Clinton all-out backing.
An ABC News poll showed that Americans, gearing up for presidential elections in November, overwhelmingly approved of Clinton's action.
Clinton's political rival, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, avoided criticising the attacks.