IHT: Firefights erupt south of capital

	Firefights erupt south of capital
	John Broder and Patrick E. Tyler/NYT The New York Times	Monday, March 31, 2003

U.S. confront Republican Guard

CAMP SALIYAH, Qatar American ground units engaged units of the Iraqi Republican Guard on Monday morning near the town of An Najaf, about 110 kilometers south of Baghdad, in a sharp armor and artillery exchange, field commanders reported.

The skirmishes do not suggest that coalition forces are pressing forward toward Baghdad, officers here said, but rather are engaging the Iraqis when the opportunity arises. Commanders hope to weaken the Republican Guard divisions ringing Baghdad with ground and air assaults in preparation for a major offensive that may be days or weeks away.

The probing attacks were not the opening act of the battle for Baghdad, but were nonetheless intended to shape the coming battle and re-establish allied momentum. American commanders have made no secret of their determination to keep the pressure on Saddam Hussein and his regime.

"We just want to maintain the initiative," said Major Michael Birmingham, spokesman for the 3d Infantry Division. "We don't want to dig in our heels here."

U.S. forces fought their way into Hindiyah, 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital Monday and captured dozens of members of the Republican Guard, The Associated Press reported.

As the ground action continued sporadically across a wide swath of territory south and west of Baghdad, the aerial bombardment of the capital intensified.

U.S. Air Force officials said that coalition aircraft had flown 1,800 sorties Sunday and into the morning on Monday. More than half of the strikes were directed at three Republican Guard units outside Baghdad, while heavy bombing continued aimed at targets in and around the city.

The air force said that waves of B-1, B-2 and B-52 heavy bombers struck targets in Baghdad, including communications facilities and suspected leadership compounds. It was the first time the three long-range bombers had been joined in a single squadron for attack, the air force said.

Among the targets was a presidential palace used by Saddam's son Qusay, who has been charged with the defense of Baghdad.

A Tomahawk cruise missile also struck the Iraqi Information Ministry, which had also been hit over the weekend, the air force said Monday. Observers in Baghdad said the building and nearby structures were in flames early Monday morning.

American B-52 bombers also struck north of the capital, near Mosul and Kirkuk, areas contested by Iraqis and Kurds.

In other fighting around An Najaf and Samawa, soldiers from the army's 82d Airborne Division killed about 100 "terror squad members," according to Central Command officials in Qatar. The U.S. troops took 50 Iraqi troops prisoner, officials said.

Top Pentagon and Central Command officials denied that allied forces would "pause" before moving on to Baghdad, but reinforcements were dispatched to secure the town of An Nasiriyah and to protect supply lines that now snake more than 480 kilometers north from American bases in Kuwait.

Heavy armor units are en route to the theater from the United States and are not expected to be in position to fight for several weeks.

Marines raided the town of Shatra, about 30 kilometers north of An Nasiriyah, in hopes of finding leaders of the Iraqi forces battling American units and supply lines. Marine officers told a Reuters correspondent traveling with the unit that local informants had told them that Ali Hassan Majid, one of Saddam's most trusted commanders, was directing the resistance from Shatra.

Majid is known as "Chemical Ali" because he directed the poison gas attacks against Kurdish villagers in 1988.

British forces attempting to quash resistance by Iraqi militiamen in and around Basra moved into the village of Abu al Khasib south of Basra after a daylong battle Sunday, British authorities said Monday. The troops said they captured 200 Iraqi soldiers and five officers, while seven British soldiers were wounded in what officials said appeared to be another instance of "friendly fire" casualties.

Momentum has been stalled in recent days by fierce attacks on allied supply lines. This has led to recriminations over whether allied commanders misjudged the willingness of Saddam's loyalists to resist and underestimated the size of the armed force needed to subdue them.

The American commander in the region, General Tommy Franks, spoke publicly Sunday in defense of his war plan, as did two of his superiors, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Franks said that his war strategy was being misperceived by "pundits" who believe "we are in an operational pause."

"It's simply not the case," Franks said Sunday at his headquarters in Doha, Qatar. "There is a continuity of operations in this plan. That continuity has been seen. It will be seen in the days ahead."

But despite Franks's expression of confidence, the situation in Iraq appeared tense. The war continued to unfold as a far more complex tapestry than expected, with dispersed engagements, political and psychological warfare against Saddam's government, mobilization to deliver aid in the South, frenetic diplomacy and shifting explanations at home about the duration and cost of the war.

There was no sign of any crumbling of Saddam's government, which vowed a wave of suicide bombings against U.S. troops.

After days of consolidation, there appeared to be some momentum Sunday for the allied forces. To the east, thousands of soldiers from the 1st Marine Division moved north from their static lines to engage Iraqi forces in towns along the highway approach to Baghdad, military officials said.

Brigadier General John Kelly, the division's assistant commander, described those operations as "liberation tactics" designed to break the hold of officials of Saddam's Ba'ath Party who are still mobilizing guerrilla-style attacks.

"People are beginning to rat them out," Kelly said after a raid on one Ba'ath Party headquarters, where weapons were seized, though the local Ba'ath leader escaped. There were no reports of casualties.

British forces fought intense battles in and around Basra, the southern Iraqi city of 1.5 million. American and British officials expressed guarded optimism that they were close to breaking Baghdad's hold over the city and establishing a secure zone to begin aid deliveries.

Early Sunday, Royal Marine commandos killed a Republican Guard colonel believed to be directing irregular forces that have fired on civilians trying to flee the city.

But the day was not without casualties. A Marine UH-1 Huey helicopter crashed in southern Iraq at a refueling station, killing three U.S. crewmen, a military spokesman said.

A British soldier was killed in fighting near Basra, 545 kilometers from Baghdad, and several others were injured, the Defense Ministry in London said.

With combat operations resuming at the front, the rear area blazed with fresh Marine helicopter assaults on An Nasiriyah, where Hellfire missiles were fired into blocks of houses and buildings on the Euphrates River waterfront.

Franks was vague Sunday in responding to reports that he had pressed for a delay in beginning combat operations when Turkey refused to allow the passage of the 4th Infantry Division through its territory. That division was to have headed a northern front against Baghdad.

The 4th Division's equipment ships passed through the Suez Canal last week, and its soldiers were set to fly to Kuwait over the next two weeks to form up in the Kuwaiti desert and push north to join the battle.

< < Back to Start of Article


Subscriptions E-mail Alerts	About the IHT : Privacy & Cookies : Contact the IHT