How, at a 10,000-meter height, can you protect a Shi’ite population? That is a fantasy. The cruel reality is that people are dying as a result of these no-fly zones.” The United States and coalition countries denied these allegations and cited popular Kurdish and Shia demands for no-fly zones, in order to protect against Saddam Hussein, who unhindered had committed numerous atrocities a few years earlier, such as the infamous 1988 Anfal genocide that killed 50,000 to 182,000 Kurdish civilians. The establishing of no-fly zones effectively cut off Saddam Hussein from much of the north and secured the Kurdish population, who gained effective autonomy directly following the intervention. This autonomy has continued to thrive and even avoided the chaos and bloodshed that characterized the rest of Iraq during the 2003 Iraq war. From 1992 to the United States-led coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003, there were two NFZs in Iraq. The NFZ in the north of Iraq was established shortly after the Gulf War, extending from the 36th parallel northwards. In August 1992 the NFZ in the south to the 32nd parallel was established, but in 1996 it was expanded to the 33rd parallel. The northern NFZ was initially part of Operation Provide Comfort relief operations to a persecuted Kurdish minority in Iraq, and was followed on by Operation Northern Watch. The southern NFZ was maintained by Operation Southern Watch. When Operation Desert Storm ended in 1991, the safety of Kurds who were fleeing during the uprising from Iraqi persecution became an issue, and Operation Provide Comfort began. This operation essentially created a Northern NFZ to Iraqi military aircraft. The operation provided the Kurdish population with humanitarian aid and reassurance of safe skies. On 26 June 1993, the US conducted a cruise missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence Service's (IIS) principal command and control complex in Baghdad, publicly announced as retaliation for the assassination attempt by the IIS on former President George H. W. Bush while he was visiting Kuwait in April of that year to commemorate a coalition victory over Iraq in the Gulf War. Fourteen cruise missiles were launched from and nine of them launched from . Sixteen hit the target, while three struck a residential area, killing nine civilians and wounding 12 others. Four missiles were unaccounted for. In October 1994, Baghdad once again began mobilizing around 64,000 Iraqi troops near the Kuwaiti border because of their expressed frustrations of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In response, the U.S. begins to deploy troops in the Persian Gulf to deter Iraqi aggression against Kuwait.