BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) In defiance of U.N. sanctions, Iraq's only transport plane departed Sunday, bound for Saudi Arabia with 121 hajj pilgrims aboard.

It was the fourth such flight in the last five days and the passengers were all women, sick or elderly who would not have been able to make the trip overland, the official Iraqi News Agency reported.

The Iraqi Airways plane, the single transport aircraft in its sanctions-crippled fleet, left Baghdad's al-Rashid military air base Sunday morning, the news agency said.

The hajj, which begins in mid-March, is a ritual required of every able-bodied Muslim at least once in a lifetime.

Sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait ban air travel to and from the country. A U.N. Security Council resolution passed in December exempted pilgrimage flights from the embargo, but said Iraq must get permission from the U.N. sanctions committee in New York beforehand.

Iraqi Airways officials have said the government refuses to request permission for the flights because Iraq doesn't want to be seen as recognizing the December resolution.

Most of Iraq's 7,000 pilgrims reach Saudi Arabia by road after a more than 48-hour drive from Baghdad. Those who flew will have to find their own way back, as the official airways has not flown pilgrims home in the past two years.

Airways officials would not say if more hajj flights were planned.