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Battle rages on Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Mystery over Saddam as battle rages
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
April 8
As U.S. officials tried to determine whether Saddam Hussein survived a massive bombing in Baghdad, the battle for control of the Iraqi capital raged Tuesday with American forces blasting government targets and foiling an apparent Iraqi counterattack. A U.S. warplane dropped four bunker-buster bombs and blasted a smoking crater 60 feet deep at a building Monday in the capital where U.S. officials believed the Iraqi president was meeting with at least one of his sons and other members of his
PRESIDENT BUSH said he didn't know whether Saddam was alive after a thunderous explosion rocked the upscale al-Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad.
"I don't know whether he survived," the president said. "The only thing I know is that he's losing power," Bush said at anews conferencewith British Prime Minister Tony Blair after a meeting at Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast.
And despite suspicions at the Pentagon that Saddam may have been killed, there were no signs of any unusual security measures at the site Tuesday. A reporter had no problem examining it, watching the rescue operation or speaking to neighbors.
The daylight airstrike by a singleB-1B bomberbroke windows and doors up to 300 yards away, ripped orange trees out by the roots, hurled steel beams 100 yards and left a heap of broken concrete, mangled iron rods and shredded furniture and clothes.
Iraqi rescue workers using a bulldozer to search the rubble said that three bodies had been recovered -- those of a small boy, a young woman and an elderly man -- and that the death toll could be as high as 14.
"At this point in time, I'm not aware of anyone from coalition forces that have walked the site," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar.
"When that's possible, we'll have more information about what exactly happened there," Brooks said at a news briefing Tuesday. "Until then, we can only go with things we can gain information on. And we believe the strike was effective in hitting the target, creating the desired effect, but we don't know all the circumstances of what happened to those who were contained inside."
Brooks said it will take some time and perhaps detailed forensic work to establish who was killed.
"There's lots of digging and DNA tests involved," a U.S. official told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Separately, NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported that the investigation could be hampered because U.S. officials do not possess Saddam's DNA.
2ND ATTEMPT
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, speaking to reporters Tuesday, made no mention of Saddam's fate, and rejected any suggestion that Iraq would surrender to American forces drawing a noose around the regime. "They will be burnt. We are going to tackle them," he said.
U.S. intelligence sources told NBC that the Pentagon was confident thatSaddamand his sons were in the building before it was bombed. The information was considered so reliable that it justified a massive attack in a residential area despite the administration's emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, they said.
A U.S. official told the Associated Press that Saddam was known to frequent the building, apparently because he thought coalition forces would not target him so close to a civilian center.
Those close to Saddam have said the Iraqi leader is so obsessed with security that very few people would know about his movements. He maintains dozens of residences and uses doubles to keep people guessing.
Coalition strikes have aimed at top Iraqi leaders from the very start of the war.
On March 20, the opening night of the war, President Bush authorized a strike on a suburban Baghdad compound where Saddam and his sons were thought to be staying. But U.S. intelligence officials suspect he survived.
URBAN WARFARE
Tuesday, U.S. forces set up a base in Baghdad as they stepped up their efforts to stamp out Iraqi resistance and extend American control of the city of 5 million people.
Some Iraqi forces staged a counterattack after dawn, sending fighters to overrun U.S. forces holding a strategic intersection. U.S. troops strafed the Iraqis from planes overhead and with mortar and artillery fire.
Within an hour, U.S. tanks retook the intersection. At least 50 Iraqi fighters were killed, and two U.S. soldiers were reported wounded, one seriously, by snipers on rooftops, military officials said.
Col. David Perkins of the 3rd Infantry Division said about 500 Iraqi forces took part in the counterattack. They were a combination of special Republican Guard, Fedayeen and Baath Party loyalists -- "a lot of civilian-dressed fighters," he said.
Meantime, sirens were heard throughout the city as ambulances tore through the streets, ferrying casualties to hospitals already struggling to cope with the impact of fighting that reached the core of the capital on Monday when U.S. forces seized a main presidential palace compound.
In southeastern Baghdad, the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines took over a prison, where they found U.S. army uniforms and chemical weapons suits, possibly from captured U.S. soldiers. Shortly after dawn, the Marines were attacked by Iraqis firing rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s; Marine snipers shot more than a dozen of them.
The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was sent to guard a nuclear plant while it also took control of the Rashid airfield.
Near the Baghdad International Airport to the west, soldiers with the Army's 101st Airborne Division killed two Iraqis in a gunbattle at a former Republican Guard headquarters.
NO PULLING BACK
The U.S. troops in Baghdad have no plans to pull back, Army Col. David Perkins said Tuesday. They now control of most of the West Bank of the Tigris, the river the divides the city, and they plan to join up with U.S. forces at the airport, further west. The Marines are advancing from the east.
"We survived the first night, and that's usually the most difficult one," said Perkins, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade.
The soldiers hunkered down in the sprawling, blue-and-gold-domed New Presidential Palace, where Saddam once slept, and patrolled neighborhoods in the city's center. At least a dozen Iraqis were being held in a hastily erected holding pen on the grounds.
Meantime, confusion and fear gripped the capital, where few telephones were working and fierce battles forced most civilians to hunker down inside their homes.
Iraqi state television went off the air Tuesday. It had failed to broadcast a morning news bulletin, showing only old footage of Saddam being cheered at rallies. The radio also went silent briefly, but returned with a diet of songs praising Saddam.
The U.S. military indicated that they had targeted Iraqi television transmitters. "Clearly we would like to destroy Saddam's capability to disseminate lies," said Major Michael Birmingham, with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
A U.S.A-10 "Warthog"plane went down near Baghdad Airport on Tuesday but the pilot was rescued, the U.S. military said.
A Reuters cameraman was killed and at least four other journalists were injured after the Baghdad hotel where they were staying came under fire Tuesday from U.S. troops. U.S. commanders said snipers were shooting mortars and small-arms fire from the building, although reporters on the scene disputed that account. A journalist with Arab-language satellite television Al-Jazeera was killed when a U.S. warplane fired on its office in Baghdad.
In southern Iraq,British forces asserted their control of Basra.
Analysis of substances found on Monday indicated that the chemicals in the barrels werenot chemical weapons agents,but U.S. troops said they found more barrels of suspicious substances on Tuesday.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, the man dubbed "Chemical Ali" by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, is believed to have been killed in an allied airstrike, U.S. and British officials said.
NBC's Carl Rochelle, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown and Jim Miklaszewski in Washington, David Shuster in Qatar, Dana Lewis near Karbala, and Chip Reid near Baghdad; MSNBC's Bob Arnot near Baghdad;
inner circle.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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