HIGHWAY 80 IN SOUTHERN IRAQ March 22 —
Allied forces crossed the Euphrates River and were halfway to
Baghdad on Saturday, their swift advance unimpeded by lingering
resistance in the cities of Basra and Umm Qasr. The biggest hurdle:
moving the massive military machine across the desert.
Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said
forces had rolled 150 miles into Iraqi territory. "The forces have
moved with impressive speed thus far," he said.
In Basra, they faced artillery and machine-gun fire. So rather
than risk a bloody urban battlefield in a city of 2 million, the
allies took what they needed an airport and a bridge and moved on,
leaving British forces behind.
"This is about liberation, not occupation," U.S. Gen. Tommy
Franks said.
In Umm Qasr, they faced street-to-street fighting against
soldiers using guerrilla tactics. "It's easy to sit in a window and
fire a rifle," said Lt. Col. Chris Vernon, a British military
spokesman.
Some had changed into civilian clothing to blend in with the
population, Vernon said, taking advantage of allied desire to
minimize civilian casualties.
"The Americans would actually say, `We've seen this guy, we let
him go, and here he pops up again fighting," Vernon said.
Some troops stayed behind to mop up, so the port at Umm Qasr
would be secure for humanitarian shipments. Skirmishes continued; a
dozen miles north of Umm Qasr, Marines engaged a couple of Iraqi
tanks and light armored vehicles.
Echo company's 1st Platoon of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit
saw action when it tried to clear bunkers near Umm Qasr.
"There was smoke everywhere. It's our first time in Iraq, and you
see these four guys walking toward you with their hands up. We knew
they were surrendering," said platoon leader Lt. William Todd
Jacobs, 24, of Cincinnati.
"But then somebody shouts, 'There's two in the hole! There's two
in the hole!'" said Jacobs.
The Marines reacted immediately, and shot both, then threw in a
grenade that blew a plume of sand and black smoke out of the
bunker.
For the first time, F/A-18 Hornets launched from the USS Kitty
Hawk dropped bombs; in hundreds of missions in the war's first three
days, they were called off targets because ground forces took them
without a fight.
On Saturday, four Hornets from the Kitty Hawk's Golden Dragons
squadron reported dropping seven laser-guided bombs on artillery
pieces at Al-Qurnah, north of Basra, in support of the advancing 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force, said Lt. j.g. Nicole Kratzer,
spokeswoman for the ship's air wing.
One pilot, Lt. John Allison of Corpus Christi, Texas, recalled
the flash he saw on his screen. "That was it," he said. "I saw a big
explosion. I saw it (the bunker) go away."
At Az Zubayr, near Basra, U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces battled
through the night, leaving husks of Iraqi military trucks along the
road.
One charred flatbed truck, windows gone and tires reduced to
black dust, was still smoking. The hundreds of Kalashnikov rifles it
carried were broken into pieces, their wood stocks shattered, their
magazine clips strewn about the road.
The truck's batteries had already been removed by looters.
Farther down, the road was blocked by a truck which had been
hauling an artillery piece until a tank shell crushed it. Another
truck was still in flames, its driver mostly burned to ashes.
The Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Regiment engaged Iraq's 32
Mechanized Infantry Brigade, or at least what was left of it
according to the Marines, 60 percent of the brigade had deserted
before the Americans even got there.
The remainder, about 300 men, fought from room to room in pockets
of a dozen each against Marines scouring their barracks and
headquarters.
The desertions were not unusual. Franks, the commander, said
1,000 to 2,000 prisoners were in custody, and thousands of others
had deserted.
Not far from Umm Qasr, nine Iraqi soldiers fled Marine tank fire
and drove their Nissan pickup truck up to a U.S. military convoy to
surrender. Some waved a large white flag as they stood in the
truck's bed; there were teenagers and older men, all dressed in
civilian clothes.
Hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles lined Highway 80 the road
to Basra, nicknamed the "Highway of Death" during the 1991 Gulf War
when U.S. airstrikes wiped out an Iraqi military convoy fleeing
Kuwait.
The roadside was dotted with Iraqi tanks blackened by direct hits
on their dirt bunkers. White flags flew over some deserted,
dilapidated barracks, including one where a white cloth had been
hung over a picture of Saddam Hussein.
At one of the barracks, Iraqis emerged to surrender, stumbling
across a rutted field clutching bags of belongings. As Marines moved
toward them, the Iraqis knelt in the field with their arms crossed
behind their heads.
Elsewhere groups of Iraqi men in civilian clothes stood near the
highway. Allied officers believed they were Iraqi soldiers who had
fled their barracks and changed from their uniforms before Marines
and British forces arrived.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army's V Corps took Nasiriyah, northwest of
Basra, said U.S. Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, a spokesman for Central
Command.
Just outside Nasiriyah, traffic along the U.S. military supply
route flatbeds, Humvees and other vehicles was so heavy it sometimes
came to a standstill, a massive jam extending back to the Kuwait
border.
There, much of the allied forces waited Saturday in long columns
of vehicles to cross into Iraq. It did not escape their notice that
they might be an inviting target for enemy fire.
"It would be tragic if the Iraqis had some artillery," said 2nd
Lt. Sarah Skinner of Vassar, Mich., a platoon leader.
photo credit
and caption:
U.S. soldiers of 3/4 Lima
company, 1st Platoon, tries to secure a farming area while
smoke from burning oil pipelines are seen in the background
near the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Saturday, March 22,
2003. (AP Photo/Laurent
Rebours)
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