The United States attempted to kill Saddam Hussein with a cruise missile attack in the early hours of this morning, in what President George Bush said were the ”early stages” of a US-British invasion of Iraq.
A sombre President Bush told the American people in a TV broadcast minutes after the blast: ”This will not be a campaign of half measures and we will accept no outcome but victory.”
A blast was reported in the Baghdad outskirts a little less than two hours after a US-imposed deadline for President Saddam to leave the country expired. It was followed by anti-aircraft fire rising into the pre-dawn sky over Baghdad just before 6am local time (3am GMT)
Pentagon officials said up to two dozen cruise missiles had been launched from ships in the Gulf and the Red Sea in a ”decapitation attempt” – an assassination attempt against the Iraqi leader himself and his sons and lieutenants.
It was unclear whether the attack had been successful. A few minutes after the attack, Iraqi radio issued a statement attributed to his son, Uday Hussein, saying : ”God protect us from foreign aggressors.”
President Bush appeared on television soon after to say the long-anticipated assault on Iraq had begun. ”My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world against a grave threat.”
By declaring war, Mr Bush legitimised the apparent assassination attempt against President Saddam. In a state of war, the congressional prohibition on the assassination of leaders is lifted.
He said that attacks had been launched against ”selected targets” aimed at undermining the regime’s ability to defend itself.
Pentagon officials said a leadership bunker had been under surveillance and a decision had been taken that it was worth taking a shot at in the hope of wiping out Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants.
There was no immediate sign that the missile attack marked the launch of the expected all-out offensive.
Many of the 170,000 US and UK ground troops in Kuwait moved into the 15 kilometre-wide demilitarised zone along the Iraq-Kuwait yesterday, but there was no sign that any of them had advanced into Iraq.
Coalition aircraft bombed Iraqi artillery and missile sites yesterday, helping to prepare the way for a US and British invasion force which moved up to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border to await the order to attack.
The air strikes were launched a few hours before President Bush’s 1am GMT ultimatum to Iraq expired with no sign that Saddam Hussein had left power as the US had demanded.
On Wednesday US planes attacked 10 Iraqi artillery pieces within range of the border, which the Pentagon said were capable of firing chemical or biological weapons. They also hit surface-to-surface missiles and military fibre-optic communications.
American troops massed in Kuwait dismantled their tents and headed into the demilitarised zone, a 15km-wide strip of desert established after the end of the last Gulf war. Vast armoured bulldozers stood at the head of the US columns to clear a way through the sand wall pushed up as a defensive barrier along the Iraqi border.
Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division, which will spearhead the drive to Baghdad, slept in the open last night as a sandstorm subsided.
The rising tensions triggered the first Iraqi surrenders of the conflict, when 17 demoralised soldiers staggered across the border in the midst of a sandstorm. They threw themselves on the mercy of American soldiers, but as hostilities had not yet formally started, they could not officially be taken prisoners of war. They were handed over to the Kuwaiti authorities.
British and US intelligence agencies are applying last-minute pressure on senior Iraqi military officials to abandon any attempt to resist a military invasion, the Guard-ian learned last night.
They were clinging to the hope they would succumb to pressure – made in direct contact through telephone, email and other forms of communication – to avoid what they have been told is inevitable defeat in battle.
Intelligence agents are trying to persuade Iraqi commanders to issue instructions to their forces in the field to surrender before a shot has been fired. The idea is to isolate those in President Saddam’s immediate circle in Baghdad and negate orders they would give to Iraqi commanders elsewhere.
What concerns American and British military commanders is that Shia Muslims in the south might revolt before the invading forces establish control of southern Iraq.
US and British planes dropped two million leaflets on Iraqi troops, telling them to stand aside when the invasion is launched.
Meanwhile up and down the border allied officers made final speeches to their troops, preparing them for what lay ahead.
One British commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Coll-ins, of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish, told his troops: ”It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive but there may be peo ple among us who will not see the end of this campaign. We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow.”
British troops manned 10 Fuch detector vehicles, designed to detect traces of chemical or biological weapons and use computers to identify 60 lethal agents.
A US tank commander led his soldiers in a Native American war dance and told them to take the US flags off their gun turrets, saying: ”We will be entering Iraq as an army of liberation, not domination.” – Guardian Unlimited Â