|
Thrust into central baghdad { April 7 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47552-2003Apr7.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47552-2003Apr7.html
washingtonpost.com
U.S. Forces Thrust Into Central Baghdad
2 Soldiers, 2 Journalists Killed on Outskirts of Baghdad
By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 7, 2003; 10:31 AM
U.S. forces made their deepest thrust into the center of Baghdad today, seizing two palaces built by Saddam Hussein and a wide swath of the city, but sustaining casualties as pockets of Iraqi troops continued to resist.
An Iraqi missile slammed into a U.S. tactical operations center of 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade today on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, killing at least two American soldiers and two journalists and wounding 15 soldiers, military officials said. The journalists were reported to be from Spain and Germany, though no identification was available.
Earlier, two Marines were killed this morning in an apparent friendly fire incident when their armored troop carrier took a direct hit from an artillery shell while attempting to cross a bridge over a canal on the outskirts of Baghdad, Reuters reported, quoting Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines.
More than 80 U.S. troops are believed to have been killed, taken prisoner or are missing in action since the conflict began March 20. Two other journalists have died in the past few days.
On the 19th day of the war, U.S. forces were conducting a pincer movement from the southeast and southwest sides of Baghdad that was moving closer today to becoming a complete encirclement of the city of 5 million people.
A U.S. officer told Reuters that U.S. biological and chemical weapons experts believe they may have found an Iraqi storage site for weapons of mass destruction.
A military source who declined to be identified said there were unconfirmed reports there could be sarin -- a highly lethal nerve agent that causes death by suffocation -- at the site. Iraq is believed to have used sarin against Kurdish Iraqis in the 1980s.
"Our detectors have indicated something," said Major Ross Coffman, a public affairs officer with the U.S. 3rd Infantry.
"We're talking about finding a site of possible WMD storage. This is an initial report, but it could be a smoking gun," he said, adding that the site was south of the central Iraqi town of Hindiyah.
Over the weekend, U.S. Marines in the central Iraqi town of Aziziyah began digging up a suspected chemical weapons hiding place at a girl's school. The dig began after U.S. forces received information from an Iraqi who described himself as a former special forces member.
The United States and Britain launched the war against Iraq to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction. No chemical weapons have yet been found, and Iraqi forces have not thus far employed chemical weapons, as U.S. officials had feared. At Central Command in Doha, Qatar, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said that the threat has not yet passed, though some U.S. military tactical commanders were allowing their soldiers to remove their bulky, hot chemical protection gear.
President Bush traveled today to Northern Ireland for a two-day summit meeting with his main coalition partner, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to discuss the war, a post-Hussein government and other issues. One area of disagreement between the two men appears to be how large a role the United Nations should play in helping to build a new government in Iraq, with Blair supporting giving the organization a significant role.
Explosions rocked Baghdad today amid heavy bombing after troops and tanks from the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division reached the center of the city and entered the grounds of the sprawling Republican Palace, Hussein's main office and security compound, as well as the smaller Sijood Palace.
Scenes of destruction were visible at the sites, which have come to embody Hussein's three-decade-long grip on Iraq. Tanks were shown rumbling down the city's vast military parade ground, and soldiers toppled a large statue of Hussein astride a horse.
U.S. forces also took up positions around other government installations, including the Information Ministry, the Rashid Hotel and a downtown army base. At the same time, knots of Iraqi soldiers dotted the route to the ministry, some thrusting rocket-propelled grenades and rifles into the air. The streets were otherwise deserted, even of militiamen from Hussein's ruling Baath Party.
The 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division entered the city at 6 a.m. with 70 M1 Abrams tanks and 60 M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles under the cover of pilotless drones and A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, the tank-busting planes popularly known as "Warthogs." The brigade moved up Highway 8, fighting back moderate resistance from small groups of Hussein's loyalists armed with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.
As the Army columns moved northeast toward the Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris, Iraqi soldiers fled along the river, some jumping in the water. Journalists in the capital reported hearing mortar and machine-gun fire directed at the U.S. forces from Iraqi defensive positions on the eastern banks of the Tigris.
With U.S. forces showing more force in the capital, officials said that Iraqi civilians were becoming more cooperative with the coalition, pointing out where Iraqi tanks and missiles were located.
As night fell, it appeared that some U.S. forces would stay on the palace grounds overnight, though they left other positions in the city and returned to their bases in the southern part of the city.
In southern Iraq, British commanders said they were in control of most of Basra, the country's second largest city where resistance had been fierce. A British convoy of up to 75 vehicles and about 700 troops pressed into Basra's old city today. The convoy that pressed into Basra's old city Monday -- 50 to 75 vehicles and about 700 troops -- consisted of jeeps mounted with heavy guns, which are lighter and better suited to urban combat.
Also in the south, Ahmed Chalabi, an expatriate anti-government leader who has been in the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq, was flown aboard a U.S. military transport along with several hundred militiamen to a base near Nasiriyah, a key crossroads along the Euphrates River about 100 miles north of the Kuwaiti border, a Pentagon official said. Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, one of a number of U.S.-endorsed opposition groups, planned to help U.S. forces recruit support among the population, the official said.
In another apparent accident, five Russian diplomats were injured while evacuating Baghdad when their convoy was caught in a gun battle between U.S. and Iraqi troops west of the capital, witnesses said. A Russian journalist who was in the convoy said the vehicles were hit by U.S. forces, but the U.S. Central Command said at its regional headquarters in Doha, Qatar, that no U.S. or British forces were operating in the area at the time.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
|
|
