April 5 —
U.S. troops dashed inside Baghdad on Saturday, blasting targets
nestled in palm trees, to show they can move at will against Iraq's
beleaguered defenders. Allies adapted their air campaign to prepare
for a climactic ground assault on the capital.
Saddam Hussein's black-clad militia his desperadoes suddenly
surfaced in downtown Baghdad and Iraqi troops deployed at strategic
city points at nightfall, in preparation for a showdown.
But tens of thousands of citizens fled, no longer believing the
assurances of their leaders that the American ground campaign was
being beaten back.
U.S. officials declared a near chokehold on the capital even
while warning that many other parts of Iraq are not yet under allied
control.
"They're pretty much cut off in all directions," Air Force Capt.
Dani Burrows, speaking for Central Command, said of Baghdad's
fighters.
While acknowledging Americans raided a suburb, Iraqi leaders
talked bravely of prevailing.
"We were able to chop off their rotten heads," the Iraqi armed
forces said in a televised statement, claiming victories no one
could see.
Allied warplanes now are flying over Baghdad nonstop, using
munitions that include concrete-filled bombs meant to damage fixed
targets with less risk to civilian buildings nearby.
Air strikes against the Republican Guard, Saddam Hussein's
loyalist Fedayeen militia and Arab fighters from outside the country
followed a daylight raid into Baghdad's industrial suburbs by at
least three dozen tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.
The aim of the probing attack was to sap morale of the Iraqi
fighters, refute public claims of Iraqi officials that they are
winning, and perhaps spark surrender or overthrow of Saddam's
government. Americans lost at least one tank and an assault vehicle
in periodic firefights.
U.S. officials said they retooled their air strikes to support a
coming ground assault on the capital while hoping Iraqis would give
up the fight before bloody urban combat became necessary.
In one close-quarters skirmish, Marines with bayonets battled
Arab fighters from abroad in a marsh on Baghdad's southern
outskirts.
Two Marine pilots were killed Saturday when their Super Cobra
attack helicopter crashed in central Iraq. And the Pentagon
confirmed the first combat death of an American woman in the war
Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, of Tuba City, Ariz.
Her body, and those of six colleagues from the 507th Maintenance
Company, were found during the rescue of American POW Jessica Lynch
in Iraq. The death toll for the allied forces passed 100,
three-quarters of them American.
Bullish on Baghdad and their progress overall, U.S. officials
cautioned that allies did not have control in much of the country.
As well, they had only made an incursion in the capital, not staying
to hold ground.
"The fight is far from finished," Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart told a
briefing at Central Command's Qatar headquarters.
A convoy of armored vehicles from the 3rd Infantry Division
rolled into the city, although apparently well away from downtown,
firing on trucks and other targets half-hidden by leaves and turning
them into fireballs.
During their trip into southwestern Baghdad, U.S. troops ran into
nests of intense resistance, drawing rocket-propelled grenades and
even anti-aircraft cannon, turned on them at ground level.
And on the airport road, Iraqi troops posed for Iraqi
photographers standing atop what they said were U.S. armored
personnel carriers destroyed in battle Friday and Saturday.
Renuart said the foray "was a clear statement of the ability of
coalition forces to move into Baghdad at the time and place of their
choosing."
Iraqis were fleeing the city by the tens of thousands, some in
vehicles bearing improvised white flags made from torn-up towels or
T-shirts.
In the evening, Baghdad's streets were bustling with Iraqi
troops, militia, loyalists from Saddam's Baath party and all manner
of armed men. Tanks and field artillery faced approaches most likely
to be used by the allies.
Members of the Fedayeen, a militia led by Saddam's son Odai,
appeared downtown for the first time since the war began, wearing
their distinctive black uniforms. The United States considers them
ill-trained but fanatical.
The morale of some Iraqis was clearly crumbling.
"We've lost we are losers," an Iraqi man told a reporter for
National Public Radio.
Lt. Gen. Michael Moseley, in charge of the air war, said from his
Saudi command post that the Republican Guard, backbone of the Iraqi
armed forces, has been hit so hard it "doesn't really exist
anymore."
Some 6,500 Iraqi soldiers are in allied custody
In northern Iraq, Kurdish forces backed by U.S. warplanes drove
Iraqi forces farther back from Kurdish frontiers. The Kurds moved
within 20 miles of Kirkuk, Iraq's second largest oil center, and a
similar distance from the oil city of Khaneqin.
In the south, two allied aircraft struck the Basra residence of
Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, commander of southern forces.
He is known as Chemical Ali by opponents who accuse him of once
ordering the use chemical weapons against Kurds.
British forces discovered boxes containing hundreds of human
remains in a warehouse between Basra and Az Zubayr. Officials said
the remains were not from this war.
They also found a catalogue of photographs of the dead, some
indicating that the people had been shot.
Along Highway 6 on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, Marine
helicopters picked up a 5-year-old boy whose face had been blown
away by shrapnel, taking him and his father to an emergency medical
center.
Marines also airlifted six other Iraqis for hospital treatment
and found that when one man's civilian clothes were cut open, he
wore a military uniform underneath.
At Baghdad's airport, captured by U.S. troops Friday, soldiers
used explosives to clear abandoned buildings and examined an
extensive underground complex below the airfield.
Lt. Col. Lee Fetterman, a battalion commander with the 101st
Airborne Division, said several hundred Iraqis were killed at the
airport, including some with bombs strapped to them who apparently
intended to attempt suicide attacks.
Renuart said the Americans' hold on the airport was firm, despite
Iraqi counterattacks Saturday.
Red Cross workers in Baghdad reported several hundred war wounded
and dozens of dead had been brought to four city hospitals since
Friday.
"The hospitals are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with
the continuous influx of wounded," Muin Kassis of the International
Committee of the Red Cross said in Amman, Jordan.
Southwest of the capital, units of the 3rd Infantry captured the
abandoned headquarters of the Republican Guard's Medina division in
the town of Suwayrah.
An Army mechanic in his armored vehicle toppled a mosaic of
Saddam outside the headquarters, then took a sledgehammer to it.
Another soldier clutched the disembodied arm broken off a statue of
the Iraqi president.
photo credit
and caption:
Company Commander Cpt. Chris
Carter, from Watkinsville, Ga., left, and his men from A
Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment pose for photos
with the sign from the Iraqi Army Medina Division headquarters
south of Baghdad Saturday, April 5, 2003. The Army took over
the compound Saturday, which had been heavily bombed by the
U.S. Air Force and abandoned by Iraqi forces.(AP Photo/John
Moore)
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