American ground forces closed in on the centre of the Shia holy city of Kerbala yesterday, sending tanks through the streets and directing artillery fire on to sniper positions. Smoke canisters screened infantry advances.
Iraqi defenders, who put up a guerrilla resistance from rooftops and alleyways, were reportedly overwhelmed. One US soldier and dozens of Fedayeen paramilitaries were said to have been killed.
By yesterday afternoon the city was relatively quiet. American reconnaissance helicopters passed low overhead and the streets were littered with Iraqi corpses. US patrols sprinted over road intersections and sheltered in doorways and behind walls.
”I think they saw what happened [in Saturday’s fighting] and backed off,” said Captain James McGahey of the Screaming Eagles 101st Airborne Division, which led the US thrust to the city centre. There was some fighting on Sunday morning. Gunfire erupted when suspected Fedayeen militiamen were spotted. ”I don’t think they stand a chance, because we have overwhelming firepower. But they’ve certainly got balls,” said Army Staff Sergeant Todd Morton.
The operation in Kerbala, about 110 kilometres south of Baghdad, followed a similar US sweep through Najaf, another holy Shia city in central Iraq, to root out fighters loyal to Saddam. Kerbala and Najaf sit astride the US supply lines stretching up from Kuwait to the southern outskirts of Baghdad.
On Saturday night American forces pounded Iraqi positions with artillery fire. Iraqis fired back with rocket-propelled grenades, mortar and AK-47 rifles. The temperatures were stifling. ”We’re not used to this type of environment. The heat out here, it’s just ungodly,” said Staff Sergeant Travis May.
”They certainly are persistent. These guys will take our fire, wait for us and when we’re underneath their positions they’ll fire straight at our turrets,” said Sergeant Jeremiah Sample from the 1st US Armoured Division. He was was slightly wounded on Saturday as he stuck his hand out of a Bradley fighting vehicle to pull in a wounded soldier.
In the city centre families cowered in mud and brick homes. Hundreds gathered on corners and in doorways, wordlessly watching the slow American advance. Some children were playing in the street, running by dead bodies.
Elsewhere in central Iraq, US forces reported they had overrun the headquarters of the Medina Division of the Republican Guard south-east of Baghdad. It is not clear whether most of the division fled or retreated into Baghdad.
Two marine pilots were killed when an AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopter crashed in central Iraq near the city of Kut shortly after midnight on Saturday. It was said to be due to an accident not enemy fire.
Soldiers from the US 82nd Airborne Division forces manning a checkpoint at Sanawah, near Najaf, destroyed a minibus packed with gas cylinders at the weekend, suspecting it to be a suicide attack.
A US representative in Qatar accepted cylinders were often used by civilians but said the vehicle had not stopped despite repeated warnings.
A group of Iranian theological students have called on Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to allow them to go to Iraq to safeguard holy Shi’ite shrines, a newspaper said yesterday.
Shi’ite Iran has given repeated warnings to US and British forces not to damage sites in the southern Iraqi cities of Kerbala and Najaf. – Guardian Unlimited Â