|
Resistance near baghdad { April 4 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26513-2003Apr4.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26513-2003Apr4.html
Iraq Pledges New Martyrdom Operations
Iraq TV Shows Tape of Hussein Exhorting Troops to Resist
By Valerie Strauss, Alan Sipress and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 4, 2003; 4:15 PM
U.S. forces seized control today of Baghdad's international airport on the outskirts of the capital but met persistent resistance from Iraqi forces just outside the huge complex, and Iraq's information minister warned of an "untraditional" attack against forces there.
Marines storming to within 12 miles of the center of the Iraqi capital also battled Iraqi forces that regrouped on the city's outskirts and that attacked with more ferocity and coordination than they have so far, suggesting that resistance could get stiffer as U.S. troops enter the capital.
Amid questions about whether Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is still alive, Iraqi television today unexpectedly aired tape of him exhorting his troops to resist the U.S.-led forces and "hit them hard." It was not clear when the tape was made, which showed Hussein reading from notes, although it did include a reference to the downing of an Apache helicopter on March 24. The tape appeared to be the strongest evidence so far that he had survived a U.S. bombing raid on March 20, the first night of the war, that targeted Hussein and his two sons in a bunker in Baghdad.
Later, Iraqi television and some other Arab television networks showed footage of someone looking like Hussein in military uniform walking down a Baghdad street being mobbed by supporters, but it was not clear when the appearance was taped or whether it was him or a body double. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said U.S. intelligence analysts were analyzing the tapes.
Earlier in the day, Iraqi Information Minister Iraqi Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf appeared on Iraqi television declaring that the airport would be "the graveyard" of the U.S.-led forces and warned, "We will carry out something that is untraditional against them, not conventional."
He said that Iraq would never use chemical or biological weapons but would conduct "martyrdom operations in a very new, creative way." Still, U.S. military officials have been concerned that the Iraqis will use chemical weapons against allied forces as thousands mass around the southern rim of the capital. President Bush had cited Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction as a motivating factor in his decision to attack Iraq and remove Hussein's government.
At an industrial site south of Baghdad, a U.S. officer said troops had found thousands of boxes of white powder, documents written in Arabic on how to engage in chemical warfare, and atropine, a nerve agent antidote. U.S. officials said they were investigating. However, the Associated Press reported that a U.S. official said the white powder may be conventional explosives.
Troops also discovered what they said could be a training center for nuclear, chemical and biological warfare in Iraq's western desert, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks said today at the Central Command Headquarters briefing in Doha, Qatar. One bottle found at the site was labeled "tabun," a nerve agent that the U.S. government says may have been used during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
At the White House, Fleischer announced that Bush would travel to Northern Ireland to meet with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the main U.S. ally, Monday to discuss the war and future governance of Iraq. It will be their second summit since the fighting began.
On the 16th day of the war, U.S. military forces sustained casualties from the second suicide car bombing in Iraq. At a U.S. military checkpoint in northwestern Iraq near the strategic Haditha dam, three American soldiers died when a car pulled up, a pregnant woman emerged and cried out in distress, military officials reported. When troops approached, the car exploded, also killing the male driver and the woman and wounding two soldiers.
U.S. military officials said the casualties included Special Operations forces who have been interdicting traffic along the road between the dam and Baghdad. The Haditha dam was captured by U.S. forces earlier this week to prevent the Iraqi government from sabotaging the structure and flooding the Euphrates River, military officials said.
It was the second suicide bombing against U.S. forces; four troops were killed last Saturday when a taxi exploded at a military checkpoint near Najaf.
Military officials also reported today the first death of an American journalist in the conflict. The reporter was Michael Kelly, the Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist. He died along with a still unidentified soldier when the Humvee they were riding in turned over. No other details of the accident were immediately reported.
In other developments, a Marine colonel in Iraq, Col. Joe Dowdy, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment, was relieved of his command but further details were not provided by U.S. officials.
U.S. military officials at Central Command said they had received reports from the battlefront describing the surrender of 2,500 Republican Guard soldiers from the Baghdad Division during fighting near Kut, about 100 miles south of Baghdad. Some of these soldiers were taken prisoner while others were sent home, officials said.
"We have had a tremendous effect on those organizations we've encountered," Brooks said.
Armored U.S. forces backed by warplanes took control of the Baghdad airport, just 10 miles south of the city's center, after a night of battles, officials said, although fighting around the outside of the grounds was still under way in some of the heaviest fighting of the day in Iraq. Troops are the airport were being reinforced by hundreds more soldiers.
U.S. forces quickly stripped Hussein's name from the airport, changing it to Baghdad International Airport, a facility that Brooks called "the gateway to the future" of Iraq.
Brooks said in seizing the airport U.S. troops turned back what they believed was an uncoordinated attack by small units of the Special Republican Guards, the elite of the elite Iraqi troops. He said the combination of ground forces, air strikes and special operations have been "devastating to Iraqi military forces."
"There will be more fighting," he said. "Fighting is not complete by any stretch of the imagination. We remain cautiously optimistic. We have in fact seized a very important piece of terrain."
Brooks said the airport would not only help prevent Hussein and other Iraqi leaders from escaping but would also at some point help serve as a base for future operations by the U.S.-led forces. He hinted that it could be used in as little as 36 hours but it was not clear if the continued fighting would change that timetable.
Britain's defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, told BBC radio that the takeover was "a huge psychological blow to the regime. It demonstrates to the regime and the people of Baghdad that we're there."
U.S. officials said about 400 Iraqi troops were killed in the fighting but did not discuss allied casualties.
Meanwhile, as troops from the 1st Marine Division approached Baghdad, an estimated 2,000 Iraqi troops comprising a mixture of Republican Guard, regular army and paramilitary fighters made a stand on the southeastern edge of the city and lobbed a fiery hail of rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire that held up the U.S. forces for hours. The Iraqis took out three U.S. tanks and forced two U.S. attack helicopters to the ground, according to reports reaching Marine headquarters. Eight Marines were injured but no deaths were reported.
By the end of the day, the Marines had reached the edge of the capital and seized a key intersection in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood about 12 miles from the city center, their prime objective for the Baghdad suburbs.
"It's fairly important," said Col. Larry Brown, the chief of operations for the Marine forces in Iraq. "It's a good position for us to base future operations from."
Within the city, the latest intelligence reports indicated that the Iraqis were planting mines in city parks and press-ganging Iraqi men to dress and fight in uniforms of the Special Republican Guard or have their families killed, U.S. officials said.
Thousands of residents in the capital of 5 million people, apparently fearing a full assault by U.S. troops, tried to flee the city in bumper-to-bumper traffic heading north, the Associated Press reported.
But President Bush's top military adviser, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers, said American forces might isolate Baghdad instead of storming it while an interim, post-Hussein government is formed.
Myers estimated that Hussein has now lost effective control of 45 percent of Iraq's territory. Pentagon officials said that two of Iraq's six divisions of Republican Guards had been effectively decimated while the others were significantly degraded.
In his briefing, Brooks said the U.S. war plan was on target and continuing to make progress in its goal to remove Hussein's government. He said allied forces had discovered caches of Iraqi weapons, including 56 surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and launchers northwest of the southern city of Basra.
U.S. officials continued humanitarian efforts in the south, and in northern Iraq, the United Nations sent its first major shipment of food aid in today, establishing a humanitarian corridor as supplies dwindle in the conflict-hit region. Twenty-three trucks carrying 575 tons of wheat flour from the World Food Program passed through the Habur border gate into Iraq, a spokeswoman from the U.N. agency told the Reuters news agency.
While consumed with Baghdad, U.S. commanders also are trying to remain focused on the threat from paramilitary forces in southern Iraq, especially around their supply lines amid concerns that concerted ambushes on convoys could play havoc with their ability to keep front-line units stocked with food, water, fuel and ammunition.
U.S. intelligence indicates that some of the paramilitary units have started to slip back into two cities now under British control, Umm Qasr and Zubair and that dozens of Arab volunteers calling themselves mujaheddin, or holy warriors, came to Basra from Algeria, Morocco, Syria and Yemen on March 31 to fight the British.
Sipress reported from Doha, Qatar and Baker in Iraq contributed to this report.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
|
|
