The Hindu : U.S. forces sweep in and out of Baghdad

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 06, 2003

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U.S. forces sweep in and out of Baghdad

A destroyed plane lies beside United States Army tanks and armoured vehicles on the tarmac of Baghdad's international airport on Saturday. — AFP

NEAR BAGHDAD April 5. U.S. armoured vehicles drove through parts of the Iraqi capital today, U.S. officials claimed, as other coalition troops advanced from the south to test the strength of the President, Saddam Hussein's defenders, who are believed to have fallen back for an urban battle. Witnesses, however, reported seeing no U.S. forces around the Tigris, which flows through the centre of the city of 5 million. And the Iraqi military, in a statement read on satellite television, said U.S. forces were repulsed when they tried to advance on Baghdad from the south. ``We were able to chop off their rotten heads,'' it said.

U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart said an American unit swept in and out of Baghdad. The incursion was not an attempt to capture large sections of Baghdad.

Rather, the intent was to show the Iraqi leadership ``that they do not have the control they speak about on their television,'' he said in a briefing at the Central Command in Qatar.

Earlier, Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said American armoured combat units ``have moved through the heart of Baghdad, defeating the Iraqi troops we have encountered.''

A reporter touring several sections of the city by car at midday said he saw no coalition soldiers.

Footage on U.S. television station Fox News showed a convoy with the 3rd Infantry moving unopposed on an empty highway near Baghdad, passing burning trucks, abandoned artillery pieces and numerous portraits of Saddam Hussein.

It was impossible to say exactly where they were, though they were outside the city proper. At one point the convoy passed under a bridge with a sign pointing the way to Saddam International Airport.

As night fell in Baghdad, the streets of the city were teeming with armed men — troops, militiamen, Baath party loyalists — who have taken positions on major intersections and on main roads leading to the southern, southeastern and western exits of the city. Tanks and artillery were deployed inside the city.

Members of the Fedayeen Saddam, a militia led by Mr. Hussein's son, Odai, were manning heavy machine gun positions.

Some of them had mortars. Many civilians were out on the streets as well, carrying kalashnikovs.

To the south, U.S. Marines approaching Baghdad drove along roads lined with deserted shops and grubby tyre repair shops. There were bodies of Iraqi fighters on the side of the road. Refugees, including women carrying babies, were headed away from the city on foot, some of them begging for water.

At one point, Marines said they came across four men who played dead — and then jumped up and started firing.

Meanwhile, armoured combat troops took several ``objectives'' surrounding Baghdad in the north and northwest, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official declined to identify the objectives taken.

In marshy lands barely a kilometre south of Baghdad's city line, Marines fought a tense battle with militant forces loyal to Mr. Hussein. Marines with bayonets were in the reeds, lunging at the fighters. Many of the combatants were foreign — Jordanian, Egyptian and Sudanese, said Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy. Iraqi officials have said there are thousands of such Arab volunteers.

At the airfield, members of the 101st Airborne Division were searching for Iraqi holdouts in an extensive underground network of tunnels, said Lt. Col. Lee Fetterman.

In northern Iraq, Kurdish forces have started gathering near the southern edge of their autonomous region in striking distance of the oil-rich city of Khaneqin, while in the north, U.S. warplanes hit Iraqi positions near the commercial centre of Mosul.

Aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, American pilots said the air campaign was getting more complicated as coalition forces converged on Baghdad because they were having to dodge one another in increasingly crowded skies.

In the past two days, pilots have reported seeing heavy fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces in the worried about crashing into one another than about being hit by Baghdad's air defences, which they can generally see in advance and avoid. — AP

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