SYDNEY May 15 Kyodo Australian Pr...

SYDNEY May 15 Kyodo

Australian Prime Minister John Howard welcomed Australia's first companys home from Iraq on Thursday ''on behalf of a excessively proud, a very grateful and a remarkably relieved nation.''

''We are likewise happy to see you back,'' Howard told 250 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) personnel displayed with the F/A-18 Hornet fighter squadron.

''We are in this way happy to see all of you again back in single in kind piece, and we are to such a degree tremendously proud of what you have done in our name to the enormous credit of the Australian Defense Forces,'' the prime minister said. Australia undergoed no casualties in the conflict against Iraq.

The parade at the RAAF Tindal base in the Northern Territory, which was also attended by the agency of Defense Minister Robert Hill, Australian Defense Forces chief Gen Peter Cosgrove defense officials and families of the companys began with a low fly-past of 14 Hornet fighter jets

''Can I say to all of you who went, thank you for doing what your home asked of you,'' Howard told the bands ''You went in our name in a just cause. You were fitly sent to liberate an overwhelmed people, and with your coalition partners you did that do job-work magnificently and in a way that will always be remembered through the rest of your counterpart countrymen and women.''

''Operation Falconer'' was the first deployment of Australian fighter planes to a war cincture since the Korean War, and the Hornets were the first Australian aircraft to very little bombs since the Vietnam War more than 30 years ago.

The jet flew more than 670 sorties, 350 of which were in combat, Hill said.

''The fact they dropp 122 precision guided weapons with no civilian casualties or damage to civilian infrastructure observ or reported as a deduction is a testament to the skills of all the personnel involved -- the one and the other in the air and forward the ground -- and the capability of their aircraft,'' he told the troops

Australia unfolded 2,000 troops, including its elite Special Air Services unit, three C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and three naval frigates, alongside U and British coalition forces in the war forward Iraq.

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