NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq April 6 —
U.S. forces plunged a dagger into the capital city on Saturday,
sweeping through industrial neighborhoods with tanks and armored
vehicles and offering Saddam Hussein's loyalists a taste of things
to come.
Late Saturday and early Sunday, U.S. Marines raided a town that
contained a suspected weapons of mass destruction site, dating back
to 1991, U.S. military officials said.
The Marines destroyed the headquarters for the Republican Guard
Second Corps in the town on the Tigris River south of Baghdad. They
also destroyed what Marines were told was a terrorist training camp
and seized one of the Iraqi president's palaces. No other details
were available about those sites.
Saturday's quick, early morning foray through Baghdad's southwest
quadrant at one point passing about two miles from a presidential
palace and the Baath Party headquarters was resisted by individual
fighters with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The Americans took no territory; the aim, according to U.S.
officials, was to send a message to regime loyalists that the city
nearly encircled by American forces could be breached at any time of
the coalition's choosing.
The New York Times, on its Web site, and Fox News quoted U.S.
officials as saying at least 1,000 Iraqis and one U.S. soldier were
killed. The U.S. Central Command in Qatar said it had no reports of
casualties.
Greg Kelly, a reporter for Fox News embedded with the 3rd
Infantry Division, said Iraqi vehicles played a game of chicken with
the Americans, speeding toward them at speeds of 80 mph or more
before they were dispatched with U.S. firepower.
The U.S. forces 26 M-1 tanks and 10 Bradley armored vehicles with
the 3rd Infantry's 2nd brigade lost one tank and an armored vehicle,
but the Iraqis lost many more, National Public Radio's Ann Garrells
reported from Baghdad.
The attack on the town south of Baghdad by the Marines' 3rd
Battalion, 7th Infantry and special operations forces began Saturday
night and was completed by Sunday morning.
Afterward, Iraqi forces abandoned trenches that had been
reinforced with sandbags and sandbag nests on roofs.
"I think they scurried like a bunch of roaches," said Gunnery
Sgt. Sandor Vegh, 34, of Circleville, Ohio.
U.S. forces have troops stationed around three-quarters of
Baghdad's perimeter: the 3rd Infantry Division along the south and
southwest edges of the city; 1st Division Marines on both sides of
the Tigris to the southeast; and according to a U.S. military
official speaking on condition of anonymity at key points just to
the north and northwest. That leaves only the northeast arc around
Baghdad free of American forces.
The air bombardment of Baghdad, meanwhile, did not slacken.
Warplanes dropped laser-guided bombs on tanks, artillery and
Republican Guard buildings.
Pilots said the air over Baghdad has become congested with
coalition planes and they are more worried about crashing into one
another than about being hit by the city's air defenses, which they
can generally avoid.
"You have to keep your eyeballs out for the other guys," said Lt.
Cmdr. John Enfield, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot aboard the carrier USS
Kitty Hawk in the Persian Gulf.
The destruction caused from the air and on the ground was
everywhere to see. Marine casualty and evacuation helicopters flew
over crumpled bodies, charred tanks, collapsed buildings and a
burning date tree forest.
The pilots of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364 flew on
repeated missions to Baghdad's outskirts, picking up war wounded and
taking them to emergency medical centers to the south.
One helicopter carried a 5-year-old boy whose face had been blown
away by shrapnel. His father, wounded in the shoulder, held the IV
as the Marines loaded them both on the helicopter. On another run,
six Iraqis were evacuated. When a Marine cut open the clothes of
one, he exposed a military uniform underneath.
There was fighting all over the Iraqi map on Saturday. To the
south, coalition aircraft struck the Basra villa of Gen. Ali Hassan
al-Majid known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering a poison gas attack
that killed thousands of Kurds in 1988.
To the north, Americans supporting Kurdish fighters took up
positions in the no-man's-land south of the Kurdish autonomous
region.
Just a mile south of the Baghdad city line, Marines with bayonets
struggled in the reeds to subdue a force of foreign fighters, mostly
Jordanians, Egyptians and Sudanese who had been "given a rifle and
told to become a martyr," said Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy, commanding
officer of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines.
"It's just a matter of fighting them, killing them," McCoy
said.
In 106 degree temperatures, amid the smoke of trenches of oil set
afire by the Iraqis, Marines pressed past clusters of refugees on
foot, begging for water. Bodies of Iraqi fighters were scattered
along the road; at one point, Marines said they came across four
seemingly lifeless men who suddenly came to life, fighting.
As other Marine units advanced north, Iraqi civilian vehicles
fled south, packed with bundles and bearing improvised white flags
made from torn-up towels or T-shirts.
According to MSNBC, the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines south of
Baghdad made an extraordinary discovery 120 bunkers full of
ammunition from Russia, Jordan, Egypt and the United States,
evidently from when America backed Iraq in its war with Iran in the
1980s. The huge cache is being tested for biological and chemical
agents.
Thirty-five miles southeast of the city, at Suwaurah, two tank
companies and an infantry company of the 3rd Infantry Division
rolled unopposed through the headquarters of the Republican Guard's
Medina Division. They passed hundreds of bunkers and foxholes and
dozens of artillery pieces, anti-aircraft gun, tanks and armored
personnel carriers all abandoned.
Hundreds of young men in civilian clothes waved as U.S. troops
drove by members of the Republican Guard who had tossed away their
uniforms, the Americans believed. Inside, they found a memo with an
elaborate border around it and instructions on how to deal with the
U.S. attack.
First: "don't panic, don't act stupidly."
Like much of the military activity around Baghdad, the move on
the Medina Division headquarters appeared aimed at preventing
Republican Guard forces from regrouping to the rear of coalition
troops, so they could focus on Baghdad in coming days.
Other troops with the 3rd Infantry Division engaged Republican
Guard fighters southwest of Baghdad, moving toward the guard's
barracks from Baghdad's international airport. They were met with
resistance from small ammunition arms and snipers.
"We're defending the airport from the movement, coming into
Baghdad, and basically we're searching and attacking up the road,"
battalion commander Lt. Col. Scott Rutter told Associated Press
Television News.
U.S. forces shored up their control of the airport itself,
storming the main commercial area, which consists of three terminals
and a parking garage. The area appeared to have been abandoned some
time ago. Commanders posted 24 hour guards at the airport duty-free
shop, to prevent any looting of alcohol.
Major Gen. Gene Renuart of the U.S. Central Command said
officials expected to have one of the airport's two runways
operational "very rapidly."
photo credit
and caption:
A U.S. Marine with India Co.,
3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, crosses an open field as a fire
rages following air and artillery strikes at an Iraqi army
training camp southeast of Baghdad Sunday, March 6, 2003. (AP
Photo/Laura Rauch)
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