Baghdad was plunged into darkness tonight as US officers said they had launched an attack on the city’s international airport, just ten miles from the city centre.
A Reuters reporter said that dozens of Iraqi civilians and soldiers were killed in the village of Furat, which lies between the airport and the city centre. Witnesses said a US missile strike was responsible.
Iraqi officials said 83 people were killed in the attack, but the Reuters reporter on the site could not confirm the death toll.
Explosions shook the outskirts of Baghdad just before 8pm, and the electricity supply was cut in large sections of the city. There was no immediate explanation for the power outage.
Earlier troops with the 3rd Infantry Division fought four hours of running skirmishes with Iraqi fighters, moving within 15 miles of the city.
US tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles destroyed more than seven Iraqi armoured personnel carriers and more than 15 Iraqi tanks, engaging both Republican Guard and regular army troops guarding Baghdad’s southern flanks.
US troops rolled down a single lane road that wraps around the southern edge of Baghdad, firing at Iraqi troops on both sides of the road, attempting to ambush the armoured column.
The running battle lasted for more than six miles, with US soldiers constantly trying to pick soldiers and fighters from civilians standing next to their houses watching the armoured column.
Hundreds of burning vehicles, both civilian and military, were scattered along the road from the Euphrates to Baghdad, along with hundreds of dead Iraqis, most in uniform, laying next to the vehicles. At least one US soldier was killed by friendly fire in the fighting.
Leading elements of the US 3rd Infantry, which is making a two-pronged advance, were getting closer to the capital while elements of four Iraqi Republican Guard divisions were reportedly moving towards them.
US officials claimed the Republican Guard units were heading south to replace two divisions that the Pentagon said were ”destroyed” by heavy bombardments yesterday.
The column of US forces approaching Baghdad’s international airport had pushed north-east from the Kerbala region, encountering less resistance than expected.
Earlier in the afternoon there had been reports of a series of explosions coming from the direction of the airport. At a rate of more than one a minute, at least 10 explosions were reported to have resounded throughout the area.
South and west of Baghdad, thousands of US military vehicles of the 7th Infantry were crossing the Euphrates river after breaking through Iraqi resistance around a bridge at Musayib, about 34 miles due south of the capital.
Iraq’s information minister dismissed reports that US troops were closing in on Baghdad and taking up positions near its airport.
”They are nowhere near Baghdad,” Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told a news conference, adding that the suggestion was ”silly”.
”Their allegations are a cover-up for their failure. They’ve not been able to control any Iraqi city. We’re waging a war of attrition against this snake and we will be victorious.”
On the way to Baghdad, US forces said many Iraqi units quickly abandoned defensive positions and fled, leaving behind trenches littered with everything from mortars and small arms to teapots and bedspreads.
Captain Frank Thorp, at US central command in Qatar, Kuwait, said: ”We are getting closer and closer to Baghdad. When we decide to go into Baghdad, we will be in Baghdad within a matter of hours from when we decide to go.”
He told CNN that US special forces had entered Iraqi installations near Baghdad, including a palace, overnight.
Soldiers shown Chemical Ali’s palace
Residents outside of Basra have shown British soldiers and reporters around the abandoned home of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the man known as Chemical Ali after he organised the gassing of the Kurds in 1986.
British newspaper The Observer reported that looters have already taken away everything they could carry, leaving behind an empty pool covered in dust.
”His palace has been comprehensively robbed. Even the fittings have gone from the walls. The light switches have been ripped out. The window panes have gone. The air conditioning units have disappeared from the walls. There is not a scrap of furniture left,” he wrote.
Chemical Ali, Saddam Hussein’s right-hand man, is believed to have fled around two weeks ago.
New Saddam statement praises fighters
Sahaf, Iraq’s information minister, today read out a new message on state television in which President Saddam praised the defenders in and around the city of Kut, south-east of Baghdad.
”Fight them with your hands, God will disgrace them. God is great,” he quoted Saddam as saying.
The Iraqi leader praised the army, people and tribes of the Tigris river city of Kut, which reportedly came under renewed US bombardment for a second day today.
Iraqi foreign minister criticises Kofi Annan
Iraq’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri, today told Reuters he believed the UN secretary general, Kofin Annan, had done nothing to stop the war and accused him of assisting it.
”He has facilitated the invasion. He has withdrawn the [UN] people between Kuwait and Iraq so as to open the border for the enemy force to invade Iraq,” Mr Sabri said of Mr Annan.
Sabri said 1 250 Iraqi civilians had been killed since March 20 and 5 000 injured.
Jordan condemns invasion of Iraq
Jordan’s King Abdullah, regarded as a US ally, today shifted his position on the war in Iraq — describing it as an ”invasion” and its civilian victims as ”martyrs” — in what appeared to be an attempt to move closer to popular opinion on the issue.
”The Jordanian people, and I am one of them, strongly condemn the killing of children and women … We feel pain and sorrow as we see on our television screens the growing number of martyrs from Iraqi innocent civilians,” he said in remarks published in Jordanian newspapers today.
Jordan, which relies heavily on US aid, sided with Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war but has this time allowed US special forces to operate on its soil, which the King insists are deployed for defensive purposes.
Nato meets to discuss post-conflict Iraq
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, today opened talks in Brussels with Russia and Nato, aimed at insisting on American primacy in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq.
His toughest sessions were expected to be with foreign ministers Dominique de Villepin of France and Igor Ivanov of Russia, whose governments have opposed the Iraq war.
France has opposed giving Britain and the US a dominant role in rebuilding Iraq, arguing that would legitimise the war. French government officials have insisted that talks focus on the role of the United Nations, rather than Nato, in post-war Iraq.
US and EU to clash over UN’s role in Iraq
Two US aircraft shot down
A US FA-18 Hornet warplane and a Black Hawk helicopter were shot down over southern Iraq, it was reported today.
The fate of the plane’s pilot was not known, but the Pentagon said that up to seven soldiers had died in the helicopter. The plane was based on the aircraft carrier USS Kittyhawk.
The Pentagon said it was investigating all possibilities for the downing of the aircraft, including ”friendly fire”. US television networks speculated that the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. The only other fixed-wing coalition aircraft lost was a British Tornado destroyed by a US Patriot missile.
The Black Hawk was brought down near Kerbala, the scene of fierce street-to street skirmishes between the US 3rd Infantry Division and Iraqi Republican Guard troops. There was some confusion over the number of soldiers on board. Pentagon officials said there were 11, seven of whom were killed. Four were injured and rescued, it said.
But an initial report from Central Command in Qatar said that there had been only six soldiers on board, and that casualties had not been confirmed.
US casualties rise to 51
The US military today reported that a US marine was killed in Nassiriya when his machine gun got caught in power lines. The incident occurred on Monday, and the marine has not yet been named.
News of his death brings the official number of US casualties in the war to 51. This figure does not include the seven reported deaths in today’s downing of a Black Hawk helicopter.
Iraq expels al-Jazeera reporter
The Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera today said that it was withdrawing all its correspondents from Baghdad, Basra and Mosul after Iraqi officials expelled one of its reporters and barred another from reporting.
Al-Jazeera said that the ministry did not give a reason for the action, which the TV channel called ”sudden and unjustified”. Iraqi officials have taken similar actions against several western networks, including CNN. – Guardian Unlimited Â