There are also rumors that there has been an uprising against Saddam in Basra.
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Coalition Hits Iraqis Near Bagdad
Update: (Reuters) -- BRITISH SPOKESMAN SAYS FORCES HAVE CAPTURED TOP BASRA BAATH PARTY OFFICIAL -- 12:55 p.m. EST
NASSIRIYA, Iraq (March 25) - Warplanes hammered elite Republican Guards defending Baghdad on Tuesday as U.S. armored columns fought through swirling sandstorms to close in on the Iraqi capital.
Field commanders said the war unleashed by the United States and Britain last week to topple President Saddam Hussein was on track, but America's top soldier said the hardest combat of the war still lay ahead.
In southern Iraq, U.S. Marines finally punched past Iraqi resistance to cross the Euphrates river at Nassiriya. But they met a fresh ambush on the road north, despite an air strike that killed at least 30 Iraqis apparently heading into battle.
Military briefers told reporters at Central Command in Qatar that U.S. paratroopers had seized a desert landing strip overnight and that six Iraqi jamming systems aimed at disrupting U.S. satellite positioning equipment had been destroyed.
And in the far south, British and U.S. commanders said they had finally snuffed out resistance by Iraqi gunmen in the deepwater port of Umm Qasr, which could now be opened to aid supplies for the hungry and thirsty local population.
But as the battle front moved closer to Baghdad, main prize in the campaign, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers said: ''We think the toughest fighting is ahead of us.''
Waves of air raids hit Baghdad's outer defenses, sending shock waves from distant blasts thudding into the city.
''It's a really heavy attack,'' Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki said. ''Even though the explosions are quite far away, they are shaking buildings in the center of the city.''
The Medina Division of Republican Guards stands between Baghdad and U.S. armored columns that have thrust to the Kerbala area, 60 miles south of the capital.
Three loud explosions also rocked the city center, prompting panic as cars sped away and pedestrians raced for cover.
Ladki said warplanes could be heard but not seen through dust storms and smoke from blazing oil-trenches around Baghdad.
''The Medina division is now under heavy air attack although poor weather will hamper this,'' British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in London. ''In the five days since military action began, a huge amount has already been achieved.''
U.S. FORCES TO CONSOLIDATE
At the briefing in Qatar, Major-General Victor Renuart said as many as 1,400 air sorties were expected on Tuesday, focusing on the Republican Guard, but he admitted the bad weather had affected the ground forces.
''It's a little bit ugly out there today,'' Renuart said. ''Weather has had an impact on the battlefield with high winds, with some rain, with some thunderstorms, and that's occurred really throughout the country, so it's been not a terribly comfortable day on the battlefield.''
Reuters correspondents with the advancing columns said choking dust storms had cut visibility to five yards in places and forced vehicles to drive nose-to-tail at low speed.
A British defense source said troops approaching the capital would pause while support lines are strengthened. Military analysts have suggested the advance is dangerously extended.
''They are moving into that area now. Initial positions are bring taken up today and then we have to consolidate combat support,'' said the source, who asked not to be named.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said U.S. and British attacks had killed 16 Iraqis and wounded 95 over the past 24 hours. He said Iraq had killed eight invading soldiers.
A senior Pentagon source said he could not confirm U.S. media reports that Iraqi leaders had drawn a ''red line'' around Baghdad within which Republican Guards had been authorized to use chemical weapons. Iraq denies that it has such weapons.
U.S. and British forces have met stronger resistance than expected. ''Their dreams of a short and easy war have started to evaporate and their hopes of defeating the Iraqi people are being destroyed,'' an Iraqi military spokesman said.
Fears of a lengthy war unsettled markets. Oil prices firmed and the dollar sank. Safe-haven gold and bond prices rose.
U.S. Marines finally crossed the Euphrates and the Saddam Canal in Nassiriya, but soon ran into more trouble.
''We're getting ambushed up there right now,'' said Lew Craparotta, commander of the Third Battalion, First Marine Infantry regiment, on the road north of Nassiriya.
Earlier, this correspondent watched the convoy race through the streets along a protective corridor of U.S. armor, before leaving a hostile city and its two strategic bridges behind.
The Marines used helicopters, tanks and artillery against the Iraqis, who had held them up for three days. The Marines have put their losses at 10 dead, 12 wounded and 16 missing.
DEADLY AIR STRIKE
As the Marine convoy pushed north, it passed the corpses of at least 30 Iraqis, apparently killed in an air strike that hit buses, trucks and cars some 12 miles north of Nassiriya.
All the dead were men, some of them wearing the black clothes of Iraqi irregular forces. Other men, many of them wounded, were taken prisoner by U.S. Marines.
Saddam urged Iraqi tribesmen to join the battle against U.S. and British forces, without waiting for further orders.
''The enemy has violated your lands and now they are violating your tribes and families,'' the Iraqi leader said in a statement read on his behalf on state television.
With the Marine force now across the Euphrates at Nassiriya, a separate military column was heading up the main Basra-Baghdad highway, which crosses the river to the west of Nassiriya.
British forces south of Basra blocked an attempted breakout by up to 50 Iraqi tanks seeking to press southward from the edge of the city, a British naval commander said.
Renuart said U.S. and British forces did not plan to besiege Basra, Iraq's second city, but would hit military targets there.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan demanded action to improve the humanitarian situation in Basra. ''A city of that size cannot afford to go without electricity or water for long,'' he said.
Blair said he would visit the United States to meet President Bush on Wednesday for the first time since the war began. Blair will also meet Annan on Wednesday.
British forces acknowledged their second combat death, saying a soldier from the Black Watch 1st Battalion had been killed in fighting in southern Iraq, taking to 20 the number of dead and missing British troops since the war started.
U.S. forces said they had destroyed a downed Apache attack helicopter to prevent the Iraqis from seizing any of the sophisticated targeting equipment and weapons aboard.
The aircraft was lost during an attack by several dozen helicopters on Republican Guards near Kerbala. The two pilots were captured by Iraqi forces and shown on local television.
Reut10:43 03-25-03
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. |
