US marines today launched a dawn raid on a southern Iraqi town following a tip-off that the Iraqi general known as ”Chemical Ali” could be using it as a base to orchestrate guerrilla attacks.
The marines went into Shatra, north of Nassiriya, on a mission to kill senior Iraqi officials believed to be hiding there, including General Ali Hassan al-Majid, according to Reuters.
Gen Majid, who gained his grisly sobriquet after using gas attacks against the Kurds in 1988, has been has been put in charge of the southern front by his cousin, the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein.
Marines stormed the town with bombers, helicopters and tanks. Officers said they had intelligence from anti-Saddam Iraqis that Gen Majid was in Shatra, along with other senior Ba’ath party officials.
Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire said that the US unit he was embedded with had retraced its steps back south down to Shatra, which is around 35 kilometres north of the city of Nassiriya, to engage with hostile forces that had been bypassed on their rapid advance.
Iraqi paramilitary forces have been ambushing coalition supply convoys and slowing the advance on Baghdad.
Saddam’s son’s palace ‘hit in Baghdad bombing’
A presidential palace used by one of President Saddam’s sons, Qusay Hussein, and the Iraqi information ministry, were targeted in fresh air raids today.
Shortly after midnight, three huge explosions shook the streets surrounding the information ministry as US and British aircraft continued their assault on Baghdad. More attacks followed, at 0200GMT and shortly before 0600GMT.
The strike appeared to have caused further damage to the ministry building, which was hit by a cruise missile on Saturday. Television pictures showed a large fire at the back of a shopping centre close to the ministry minutes after the blasts jolted the city centre.
The last 24 hours have seen some of the most intense bombardment since the war began, as US and British aircraft attacked Republican Guard positions protecting the approaches to Baghdad. There were also reports of heavy bombing in Kirkuk and Mosul.
US troops kill 100 Iraqi paramilitaries
US troops killed around 100 Iraqi paramilitary fighters and captured about 50 prisoners at the Shia holy city of Najaf and Samana in south-central Iraq, according to US Central Command.
The US army’s 101st Airborne Division surrounded Najaf yesterday, and was in position to begin rooting out the paramilitary forces, US commander Marvin Hill claimed. Four American soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber in Najaf on Saturday.
In Nassiriya, where fighting has been fierce for a week, US marines secured buildings held by an Iraqi infantry division. They contained large caches of weapons and chemical decontamination equipment.
US troops also advanced to the town of Hindiya, on the Euphrates river, engaging Iraqi soldiers in firefights. At least 15 Iraqi troops were reported to have been killed.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told an Egyptian daily that coalition forces want to liberate, not conquer, Iraq.
”Our quarrel is not with the Iraqi people but with Saddam, his sons and his barbarous regime which has brought misery and terror to their country,” Blair wrote in an op-ed piece for Sunday’s pro-government Al-Ahram.
Blair wrote that London and Washington wanted to avoid military action, and the coalition is now ”doing all that is humanely possible to minimise civilian casualties and finish this campaign quickly.”
”I recognise that the Iraqi people have been the biggest victims of Saddam’s rule. This is not a war of conquest but of liberation,” the media savvy Blair said in his article, which was published in Arabic.
Thousands of Egyptians have staged protests across the country since the war began, directing attacks at the United States and Britain for attacking Iraq and accusing both nations of trying to control and re-map the Middle East.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a key US ally, has condemned the war but blamed it on what he calls Iraqi counterpart Saddam Hussein’s failure to cooperate with the international community.
In a much longer article that appeared alongside Blair’s, Al-Ahram editor Ibrahim Naife asked: ”Does he (Blair) also realise that this war destroys the fabric of the region, devastates the pillars of stability within it and causes deep scars in the
peoples’ psyche that might never heal?” – Guardian Unlimited Â