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Pause is ordered { April 4 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Pause is ordered in advance on capital; U.S. infantry seizes control of airport
Dexter Filkins/NYT The New York Times
Friday, April 4, 2003
OUTSIDE BAGHDAD U.S. Marines advanced to the Baghdad city limits Friday, meeting scant resistance but stopped at the brink of entry, awaiting orders.
The thrust to the capital came as a U.S. spokesman said that army forces had captured 80 percent of the Saddam Hussein International airport 19 kilometers (12 miles) from the center of Baghdad and were stepping up attacks elsewhere in the southern suburbs.
Overnight and early Friday there was a shattering bombardment of what remained of the Nida Division of the Republican Guard, with artillery shelling Iraqi tanks from as much as 30 kilometers away and B-52s attacking from above.
The reports from 155mm guns were so powerful that they blew off the tarps and broke the windshields of nearby U.S. military vehicles, officers said.
The 1st Marines raced behind the Nida Division, whose burnt-out tanks littered the roadside. Local residents cheered the Americans, as they had Thursday.
Two captured members of the Medina Division of the Republican Guard said Friday that under intense bombardment, hundreds of their fellow soldiers gave up the fight, slipping away from the Guard. Many tore off their triangle insignias, the two said. The advance Friday left the Marines 16 kilometers from central Baghdad, and across town from the 3d Infantry Division, which took control of the airport, on the city's west side. The dual positions but the city in a powerful vise.
With strong momentum, the Americans might wish to enter the city, but generals must decide whether the risk of street-by-street fighting and chemical attack argues in favor of holding back.
The advance came after waves of civilians streamed out of Baghdad and its surrounding cities Thursday. The bulk of the 1st Marine Division crossed the Tigris River on Thursday from the southeast, and wheeled northward, pausing to do battle with several hundred Iraqi soldiers who decided to stand and fight.
Blast at checkpoint kills 5
Barry James of the International Herald Tribune reported:
In what appeared to be the second suicide attack of the war, a car exploded near a U.S. military checkpoint in western Iraq, killing three soldiers, a pregnant woman and the car's driver, the U.S. Central Command in Qatar said Friday.
A U.S. officer also said Friday that troops had found thousands of boxes of white powder, nerve agent antidote and Arabic documents on how to engage in chemical warfare at an industrial site south of Baghdad. ,
Colonel John Peabody, engineer brigade commander of the 3d Infantry Division, said the materials had been found Friday at the Latifiyah industrial complex just south of Baghdad.
"It is clearly a suspicious site," Peabody said. He said the troops had also discovered atropine, which is used to counter the effects of nerve agents.
One of the bottles was labeled Tabun, a nerve gas. Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, the chief spokesman for the central command, said the facility appeared to have been used for training.
A statement issued by the U.S. Central Command said the car explosion appeared to have been a suicide attack, and that it had occurred near the Haditha dam, 130 kilometers east of the Syrian border, and northwest of Baghdad. The dam was taken over by U.S. special forces a few days ago.
It said the explosion occurred Thursday when a civilian vehicle approached the checkpoint.
"A pregnant female stepped out of the vehicle and began screaming in fear," a statement said. "At this point the civilian vehicle exploded, killing three coalition force members who were approaching the vehicle and wounding two others."
The woman and the driver also were killed, according to the statement.
On March 29, four soldiers were killed at an army checkpoint by a suicide bomber posing as a taxi driver.
Troops who moved into the Baghdad airport overnight encountered disorganized but at times fierce resistance by small units, and at least 320 Iraqi troops were killed in heavy artillery attacks and air raids, according to Brooks the Central Command spokesman. He said Iraqi resistance had crumbled in the face of devastating air and artillery attacks.
Along the road from the Euphrates River to Baghdad were hundreds of burning vehicles, civilian and military. Hundreds of dead Iraqis, most in uniform, lay next to the vehicles.
American and British officials said that the defense put up by the Republican Guard and army had been a shambles, with little sense of clear direction.
American troops held the airport runway, but not the buildings or the surrounding areas, which would have to be secured before flights could be brought in. The airport has one runway long enough to accommodate the biggest transport planes and a second runway that could be used for tactical operations, officials said. Brooks said capture of the airport would prevent regime leaders attempting to escape by air.
Residents of villages near the airport fled their homes and headed for the center of the city, which also shook under a storm of bombs and missiles during the night. The city was in total darkness for the first time since the war started.
"We didn't do it. It's as simple as that," Brooks said. One possibility was that the Iraqi authorities had switched off the lights to allow troops to be redeployed in darkness.
The weather was hot, and black smoke drifted over the city from oil burning in trenches
Although the capture of the airport would give the U.S.-led forces a strategic advantage by allowing them to fly in supplies and reinforcements, commanders warned that tough fighting lay ahead.
"Nobody should be euphoric that now we are on the edge of Baghdad this thing is just about over," said General Richard Myers, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. "That's not true," he said.
A message purported to have come from President Saddam Hussein exuded continuing defiance.
"Victory is certain and it is in our hands," the statement said. "To achieve this goal, we must not let the enemy decide and hit, but we must find ways to exhaust him and not give him the chance to catch his breath."
As U.S. forces moved closer to Baghdad on Friday, precautions against chemical weapons were relaxed for some them, who were allowed to take off their chemical and biological warfare suits and boots. But the Marines moving up from Al Kut put on their suits despite the rising temperatures.
There had been fears that Iraq would use chemical weapons once the U.S. troops crossed into what is known as the Red Zone surrounding Baghdad.
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
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