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Baghdad raided { April 7 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/03/4/7/16772660.cfmhttp://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/03/4/7/16772660.cfm
Published on HeraldNet on Monday, April 7, 2003
Baghdad raided
Associated Press and Los Angeles Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. troops seized key buildings in the center of the Iraqi capital today, including a main presidential palace and the Information Ministry.
"I do believe this city is freakin' ours," said Capt. Chris Carter of Watkinsville, Ga.
This morning brought to Baghdad the scream of missiles, the thud of artillery shells and the crackle of heavy machine gun fire. Buildings in the city shook violently with the explosions.
Reporters saw the tanks roll into the heart of Baghdad on the western side of the Tigris River, which divides the city. Iraqis fled along the river, some jumping in the water.
Also occupied was the Al-Rashid Hotel.
The 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division entered the city at 6 a.m. local time, moving up the highway and meeting only moderate resistance mostly from infantry. They took assault fire and rocket propelled grenades.
U.S. officials declared Baghdad cut off from the rest of Iraq.
"We do control the highways in and out of the city and do have the capability to interdict, to stop, to attack any Iraqi military forces that might try to either escape or to engage our forces," Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday.
"No bad guys are coming (out)," Marine Capt. Joe Plenzler said. "No bad guys are going in."
The developments gave the impression of a regime entering its death throes, tipping on the verge of collapse. Intelligence reports said a number of high-level officials from Saddam Hussein's Baath Party were trying to flee the city. The reports said Hussein's ability to control Baghdad was slipping and predicted that the fall of his government was imminent.
"Regime collapse is a matter of days, not weeks," one report concluded.
A man who many at the U.S. Defense Department would like to see replace Hussein as Iraq's leader, Ahmed Chalabi, reportedly was flown from exile on Sunday into the southern city of Nasiriyah, accompanied by 500 troops designated the 1st Battalion Free Iraqi Forces.
Marines closing in on Baghdad from the south were told to take off their protective suits today for the first time in 20 days, a sign of easing fears of possible use of chemical or biological weapons.
Intense fighting took a growing toll on combatants and civilians. Injured Russian diplomats and a convoy of America's Kurdish comrades in arms were among unintended victims caught in crossfire and friendly fire Sunday. Kurds said 18 of their own died in the mistaken U.S. air strike.
A hulking U.S. C-130 transport plane landed at the Baghdad international airport Sunday, presaging a major resupply effort by air for U.S. troops, dependent until now on a tenuous line stretching 350 miles to Kuwait.
Assorted prizes fell into allied hands, some after hard fighting, but U.S. forces had yet to confront Baghdad's last-ditch defenders on a large scale.
"They are extremely weakened, but that does not mean they're finished," Pace said of the Republican Guard.
Inside a VIP building at the airport, troops found a lavish hideaway believed to have been used by Hussein, Associated Press Television News reported.
Southeast of Baghdad, Marines seized one of Hussein's palaces, poked through remnants of a Republican Guard headquarters and searched a suspected terrorist training camp, finding the shell of a passenger jet believed to be used for hijacking practice.
Also to the south, U.S. forces took control Sunday of the center of the holy city of Karbala, the Army Times newspaper reported from the scene.
On another vital front, British troops thrust to the center of Basra, Iraq's second largest city, with a sense they were finally shaking Hussein loyalists loose.
The British found resistance softer than expected, picked up reports that the local Baath Party leadership was crumbling and fought into the core, losing at least three soldiers and finding their arrival cheered by hundreds of citizens.
"We have a lot of it occupied," British Maj. Gen. Peter Wall told the BBC. He said it might take days to put down renegades.
In and around Baghdad, civilians were caught up in the intensified ground fighting.
At the al-Kindi hospital in a working-class Baghdad district, scores of civilians with shrapnel wounds have been coming in since Saturday night. Among them were eight members of one family.
A statement broadcast on Iraqi state television in Hussein's name was typically defiant but hinted at problems coordinating the nation's defense. It urged soldiers who had been separated from regular units to join up with any unit they could find.
U.S. Central Command officials estimated Sunday that 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi fighters died in the 3rd Infantry Division's 25-mile incursion in an industrial section of Baghdad a day earlier.
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks gave no specifics on how the estimate was reached. More than three dozen tanks and armored vehicles staged the raid; U.S. casualties were described as light.
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