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20 missing killed 50 wounded { March 24 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://nytimes.com/2003/03/24/international/worldspecial/24MILI.htmlhttp://nytimes.com/2003/03/24/international/worldspecial/24MILI.html
March 24, 2003
Iraq Broadcasts Images of Prisoners — U.S. Assails Ruses
By PATRICK E. TYLER
KUWAIT, March 23 — American and British ground forces today suffered their worst casualties so far while they battled determined Iraqi forces on two fronts in what an American commander said were "the sharpest engagements of the war."
Military officials in the war zone reported that at least 20 American soldiers were missing or killed and 50 or more wounded in a day of ambushes, accidents and tank and artillery engagements. Precise casualty figures were not immediately available.
Late tonight, American ground forces began to attack Iraq's Republican Guard for the first time, apparently hoping to weaken the divisions guarding the roads to Baghdad.
Most of the American losses occurred at Nasiriya, along the Euphrates River, about 100 miles north of the Kuwaiti border, where an Army maintenance convoy was ambushed, resulting in the death or capture of about a dozen soldiers, some of whose images were beamed around the world by Arab television.
Later, Marines attacked the city, and during a fierce battle with about 500 Iraqi defenders, a rocket propelled grenade struck a troop carrier, witnesses said, killing up to 10 soldiers.
Military officials said dozens more were wounded in the battle, and helicopters were seen ferrying the wounded out of the city.
Meanwhile, the main force of the allied army — the Army's Third Infantry Division and the First Marine Expeditionary Force — raced toward Baghdad, with the largest Army force passing Najaf. It paused on the approach to Kerbala for the night, about 100 miles south of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
In general, allied forces skirted centers of population, keeping their focus firmly on Baghdad. The central American objective of the war is the removal of Saddam Hussein's government from power and the subsequent disarmament of the country.
Tonight, Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, deputy commander of forces in the region, said he would not confirm casualty figures because "first reports are almost always wrong."
President Bush said he grieved with the parents of the soldiers lost in battle, but he said he was confident that the campaign would succeed.
"I know that Saddam Hussein is losing control of his country, that we're slowly but surely achieving our objective," he said upon returning from a weekend of war planning with his top advisers at Camp David.
General Abizaid raised a number of alarms about the days ahead. Intelligence reports, he said, indicated that Iraqi troops were wiring explosives to bridges in Baghdad and placing other explosives "against certain buildings in Shia neighborhoods," implying that the Iraqi government may be preparing to inflict civilian casualties and then blame allied bombing for the damage.
He also described scenes from today's fighting that appeared to enrage American commanders.
In one incident, Iraqi troops raised a white flag to surrender only to attack their approaching captors with artillery fire. In another, he said, a group of civilians made motions to surrender and then opened fire when American marines came forward. Five marines were injured in the gun battle, officials said.
Over all, the Iraqi tactics, while showing little coherent military organization, appeared to expose a potential weakness in the dash the American forces were making to Baghdad.
By skipping over cities, American forces appeared to have left their flanks and rear areas exposed to counterattacks by "martyrs of Saddam," irregulars under the command of Republican Guard officers dispatched by Baghdad to galvanize resistance and slow the advance of the American forces.
Military officials tonight played down the significance of these tactics, while lamenting their cost.
Among the missing Americans were a dozen members of the Army's 507th Maintenance Company who took a wrong turn and drove into Nasiriya without an armored escort, military officials said. Their convoy was attacked by tank fire.
The Marine force later battled its way into the city to recover four the wounded, officials said. It was not clear how many of the more than 30 soldiers in the company escaped.
Iraqi television reports claimed a number of them had been taken prisoner, and Pentagon officials said that appeared to be true. State television broadcast interviews with five of the captives, which was rebroadcast around the world by Al Jazeera, the satellite network in Qatar.
The American prisoners appeared frightened. Some bore wounds. An interviewer asked them to state their names and their units. Other video showed the bodies of several soldiers as a smiling Iraqi rolled one body over to face the camera.
Secretary of State Donald H. Rumsfeld and a number of military officials asserted that the Iraqi exploitation of the prisoners and of the war dead was a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Earlier in the day, an American Patriot missile battery in Kuwait shot down a British Tornado fighter-bomber as it was returning from a mission, destroying the aircraft. The two crew members were killed.
Allied warplanes continued a bombing campaign across the country, striking Iraqi Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad that provide the last line of defense for Mr. Hussein's government.
To the north, allied bombers struck targets around Mosul near the Turkish border, reporters in the region said. Senior officials of Iraq's Kurdish minority allied with Washington said hundreds of American troops were arriving by air, apparently with the goal of opening a northern front in the next few days.
In the south, American marines fought to suppress about 120 Iraqi regular and irregular forces that attacked their positions at Umm Qasr, the port south of Basra that was seized on Friday to provide a landing zone for aid for the Iraqi people.
At the same time, allied bombing raids against Basra killed more than 70 people, according to officials of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, who appeared on Al Jazeera as it broadcast grim scenes of civilian casualties strewn on the floors of hospitals.
A spokesman for the British armed forces, Lt. Col. Chris Vernon, said the city had been without electricity and water supplies for 48 hours, though it was not clear whether allied bombing was responsible.
British and American officials had said at the outset of the campaign that they would avoid bombing Iraq's electrical grid and water supplies, especially in Basra, where they hoped to take the city without a fight to bring more pressure on Baghdad.
The loss of potable water supplies from bombing during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 touched off an epidemic of typhoid and cholera that caused widespread death and suffering among the civilian population.
The relentless drive of the Army's Seventh Cavalry north toward Baghdad was interrupted when the armored vanguard of the V Corps engaged a battalion-size unit of the Iraqi Army west of Najaf.
Also at Najaf, where the landscape rises to create an escarpment that separates the western desert from the Euphrates valley, the main force of the Third Infantry Division engaged a force of Iraqis made of air defense troops, army regulars and some irregular forces.
A New York Times reporter traveling with the army said A-10 ground attack aircraft were called down to destroy the Iraqi positions, and after several hours, the division rolled up the escarpment and continued on past Najaf.
In the 12-hour battle at Nasiriya, a force of 1,000 marines from the First Marine Expeditionary Force entered the outskirts of the city.
An ABC News reporter, John Berman, traveling with the unit, reported that an Iraqi vehicle waving a white flag set up an ambush in which the marines then came under heavy fire. A rocket-propelled grenade round hit one of the vehicles. General Abizaid of the Central Command said fewer than 10 soldiers were killed. About 50 more were wounded.
Outside the city, marines engaged in a daylong artillery battle with other Iraqi forces before securing two bridges, one over the Euphrates and another over the Saddam Canal parallel to it, military officials said.
On the southeastern front, the day started at Umm Qasr, where the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit came under fire from a force of about 120 Iraqi soldiers in a nearby building.
Marines dived for cover as tanks maneuvered to attack the building. Marines also called in airstrikes in an engagement that ended when the Iraqis dispersed and one of their officers, a Republican Guard general, was captured.
In Doha, Qatar, General Abizaid said tonight that the Iraqi officer was the second general taken prisoner. "They are providing us with information," he said.
Just north of the port, American and British tank units tonight were engaged in gun battles with Iraqi defenders. A Reuters correspondent just outside Basra said flashes of explosions were visible over the city. Military officials said isolated pockets of Iraqi troops were battling the allied units.
Allied commanders continued to say they did not consider the city a military objective, even as they tried to subdue the Iraqi forces that were preventing their peaceful entry and the passage of forces through the city to points north.
"United Kingdom forces are at this stage on the outskirts of Basra and we are closing with our objective," said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, a British spokesman in Qatar, adding, "Basra is not yet secured."
President Bush said today that getting aid to the region was a priority. "That humanitarian aid should begin moving in the next 36 hours," he said. "And that is going to be very positive news for a lot of people."
Also in southern Iraq, an American soldier was killed and another was injured in a vehicle accident that officials said was not associated with the fighting.
Military commanders said they had not discovered any evidence of weapons of mass destruction among the tons of weapons and depots being abandoned by Iraqi forces. Still, General Abizaid said, "There are reports that some units in the vicinity of Al Kut may have some type of chemical weapons."
But, he added, "I have no doubt that we'll find weapons of mass destruction, but you shouldn't think it's going to happen tomorrow."
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