George Bush has given the green light to the American commander in the Gulf, Tommy Franks, to launch the battle for Baghdad.
The Pentagon disclosed the move in an effort to dispel the gloom created by fears that the US-British campaign has become bogged down, with its supply lines overextended and meeting fiercer than expected Iraqi resistance.
The Pentagon said President Bush was leaving the timing of the assault on Baghdad to General Franks, but a senior military source at central command in Qatar said a massive US-led ground battle for the Iraqi capital was ”imminent”. He added: ”The next four days will be critical.”
Early today Central Command said a major battle was under way near Kerbala, a key city on the way to Baghdad.
The action in Kerbala marked the first major ground battle with Republican Guard troops, the forces guarding the approaches to the Iraqi capital. Heavy fighting raged as US army units battled parts of the Medina Division of the Republican Guard, Iraq’s best trained and equipped forces.
Earlier yesterday, Tomahawk cruise missiles and airstrikes pounded Medina Division positions near Kerbala. The Pentagon claimed that bombing had reduced the Medina Division to 50% of its fighting strength.
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, in uncharacteristically forceful and lengthy remarks to reporters, said reports of internal divisions between senior commanders and Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, were ”bogus” and ”harmful to our troops”.
Apparently addressing people inside the armed forces who have voiced doubts about the war plan, Gen Myers stressed how senior military leaders had explicitly expressed their satisfaction with the plan in advance.
Last night, troops from the US 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were poised to move north towards the capital.
Sean Maguire, a Reuters correspondent with American forces near the front, said: ”It seems as though the operational pause in our sector is over. We’ve swung from passivity to activity quite quickly.”
Further south on the coalition’s vulnerable supply lines, a firefight raged for eight hours yesterday in Diwaniya, south-east of Baghdad, as Iraqi troops fired artillery, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at US marines.
Iraqi TV carried a statement from Saddam Hussein yesterday urging a holy war against invading troops. It called on Iraqis to ”hit them, fight them _ fight them everywhere”.
The statement was read by the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, and no film of the Iraqi leader was shown – a fact that stoked speculation he might be dead.
”The only thing that the coalition will discuss with this regime is their unconditional surrender,” Rumsfeld said, in reference to what he said were rumours put out by the Iraqi government that the US was talking to leaders in Saddam Hussein’s government.
Although the expectation is that the US will encircle Baghdad and then squeeze it, the Pentagon insisted yesterday it might still ”punch through” the capital: a sudden, concentrated drive into the heart of the regime.
In a sign of growing realism, the Pentagon briefed reporters that, contrary to expectations before the war, US forces should not now expect a rousing welcome from Baghdad’s seven million population.
The Iraqis appear to have massed five of the six Republican Guard divisions around the capital, adding men from the Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar divisions.
Now a force of US troops, supported by Abrams M1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles as well as attack helicopters, is poised to clear a route to the capital.
Another drive will come from the US 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, from near the town of Kut. – Guardian Unlimited Â