US tanks briefly penetrated the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on Saturday in a tactical move designed to demoralise Iraq’s leadership by demonstrating military might, US military officials said.
Reports earlier on Saturday said that 25 Abrams battle tanks and 12 Bradley fighting vehicles were met by small arms fire, but encountered no major resistance after leaving the city’s airport in broad daylight and entering the suburb of Dawra, in southern Baghdad. The suburb was seized by US forces on Friday.
However, a US military representative was reported to have claimed that up to 1 000 Iraqis had been killed during the incursion.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that several hundred wounded Iraqis had been admitted to Baghdad hospitals after fighting broke out when the US troops arrived.
”The message … is to, in a way, put a bit of an exclamation mark on the fact that coalition troops are in the vicinity of Baghdad … and demonstrate to the Iraqi leadership that they do not have control,” said US Major General Victor Renuart.
”It was very clear to the people of Baghdad that coalition forces were in the city. That image is important,” he added.
US troops were now in a position to move into the capital when they chose, Maj Gen Renuart added. However, he warned that the fight was ”far from over”.
Iraq has insisted that Baghdad is still firmly under Iraqi control, and a Reuters correspondent who toured southern and central districts of the city said he did not see any US forces.
Officials denied that any US forces were in Baghdad, saying that its troops had driven the Americans from the international airport. The claim was denied by the US military.
Dozens of fighters and bombers were on 24-hour alert in preparation for an assault on the Iraqi capital, the US Air Force said.
Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Moseley said that the planes would support American ground troops in what could be bloody urban combat.
”The trick, if you have to do this, is to use the smallest weapon possible to get the maximum effect, so that you don’t create unnecessary loss of civilian life or property,” Lt Gen Moseley said.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that US marines had begun digging up a suspected hiding place for chemical weapons in a school courtyard in the town of Aziziyah, south east of Baghdad.
New blasts rock capital
Two large explosions rocked the centre of Baghdad just after midnight local time (9pm BST) on Saturday, Reuters reported.
Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul said that she had seen two orange arrows arcing over the capital from the south-east towards the north-west of the city.
For much of Saturday night, calm reigned over the Iraqi capital. However, a four-hour lull came to an end at around 5am (2am BST), when explosions were heard in the south-west of the city.
Civilians fleeing
Thousands of terrified civilians are fleeing Baghdad.
Residents packed buses, cars and horse-drawn carts with blankets and food as US forces prepared for a full-scale attack on the Iraqi capital.
Witnesses said that most appeared to be heading north-west of the city, possibly to seek refuge in neighbouring Syria.
There were also reports of Iraqi army vehicles embedding themselves in crowds of fleeing civilians for protection.
US Marine Captain Matt Watt told Reuters that he had seen about 2 000 people heading south from Baghdad on Friday.
The streets of the capital were said to be teeming with armed men who have taken positions on main roads leading to the southern, south-eastern and western exits of the city.
President Saddam’s much feared Fedayeen militiamen reportedly materialised in the city centre for the first time in weeks.
Hospitals ‘struggle to cope’
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that Baghdad’s hospitals are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the almost continuous influx of war wounded.
The ICRC, which is virtually the only international aid organisation in Iraq, said that four hospitals visited by its staff in the capital had reported ”several hundred war wounded patients as well as dozens of fatalities” from Friday’s fighting.
Saddam tells Iraqis to ‘step up attacks’
President Saddam has urged his army and the Iraqi people to increase their resistance against the invading troops.
In a statement read out on Iraqi television by the information minister Mohamed Saeed al-Sahaf, President Saddam said that coalition forces were now focusing on Baghdad.
”You must inflict more wounds on this enemy and fight it and deprive it of the victories it has achieved … you must rattle their joints and terrify them and speedily defeat them in and around Baghdad,” he said.
Troops find mass grave
The remains of as many as 200 people have been discovered in a ”makeshift morgue” by British soldiers in southern Iraq.
The skulls and bundles of bone, in strips of military uniform, were dumped in plastic bags and unsealed hardboard coffins in an abandoned Iraqi military base on the outskirts of Zubayr.
A forensics team has been called in to investigate a possible atrocity perpetrated by Saddam Hussein’s regime.
One British officer said that the bodies had been there some time, and were unlikely to be related to this conflict.
Kerbala attacked
US aircraft and ground troops attacked the central Iraqi city of Kerbala on Saturday in an effort to protect US forces moving into Baghdad, US officers said.
Troops fought street by street battles with Iraqi paramilitaries in the narrow roads of the Shi’ite shrine city.
”It’s freaky in there. Lots of bullets flying around. It’s pretty scary,” one evacuated US soldier told Reuters.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Kurdish militia fighters and US forces pushed south closer to northern Iraq’s two major oil centres, Kirkuk and Mosul, as planes bombed Iraqi forces defending both cities.
Republican Guard HQ ‘captured’
US forces on Saturday claimed to have captured the headquarters of the Republican Guard’s Medina division in Suwayrah, a town about 50 kilometres south-east of Baghdad.
Two tank companies and an infantry company of the 3rd Infantry Division rolled through the headquarters unopposed, and quickly took over the entire base. It appeared that the Republican Guard defences had completely collapsed.
On a 5 kilometre stretch of road outside the base were hundreds of bunkers and foxholes and dozens of artillery pieces, anti-aircraft guns, tanks and armoured personnel carriers.
All of them had been abandoned by Iraqi troops. No troops could be seen. The US tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles used their main guns to destroy the military vehicles along the route. – Guardian Unlimited Â