American troops were last night preparing to mount the first significant assault on Baghdad in a final operation to take the city sector by sector.
Soldiers fired a barrage of artillery and mortars at Iraqi positions close to the centre of the capital and fought to secure one of the key bridges across the Tigris river in the south-eastern suburbs. American A-10 tankbuster aircraft were in the sky strafing Iraqi troops.
Other American troops were fanning out around the city. ”They will try and take little chunks of the city at a time,” said a senior military source at central command. ”Commanders will take tactical decisions on the ground depending on the level of resistance. The psychological impact of troops encircling Baghdad will be very strong.”
The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was approaching the south-eastern suburbs, while troops from the 101st Air Assault Division and the 3rd Infantry Division were trying to move into the north-east. One of their main targets is a key river crossing to the north-east. Many of the first raids will be into Shia neighbourhoods, like Saddam City to the east, where the US hopes the local population will be more welcoming.
In the air, US and British jets were operating combat patrols over the capital 24 hours a day. The city has been turned into what pilots call a ”kill zone,” where they have permission to hit any military targets as soon as they appear.
Since the targets are in a civilian area many of the precision-guided bombs have had their warheads removed and have been fitted instead with concrete blocks to minimise the impact of the blast.
”The outcome remains beyond doubt,” Brigadier-General Vince Brooks, deputy director of operations at central command in Qatar, said. ”The regime gets in greater and greater danger with every moment they have chosen to remain in place.”
In a further indication that the Americans have begun to take the upper hand, an hour after dark a Hercules C-130 transport plane became the first US military aircraft to land at the international airport on the south-western edge of the capital. The landing heralds the start of what is certain to become a major airlift. Up to 10 000 American soldiers have now poured into the airport.
But the fighting is not over. There were intense gun battles inside Baghdad at the weekend. A dozen Iraqi fighters ran at the airport yesterday in an attempt to attack the American positions until an airstrike was called in. At least two of the Iraqis were killed. A convoy of more than 20 American tanks and armoured personnel carriers pushed through a suburb of south-western Baghdad on Saturday morning, striking what US officials said was a major psychological blow.
The tanks approached from the south and passed close to Baghdad University and Saddam Hussein’s main palace, before turning back to the airport to the west. It was a brutal, one-sided assault. As many as 3 000 Iraqi soldiers have been killed since the airport was taken, but only two American soldiers are thought to have died. ”We were involved in direct firefights,” said Gen Brooks. ”We know it was a considerable amount of destruction on all of the force that was encountered.”
Iraqi soldiers were attacking in small groups of between 20 and 40 lightly protected vehicles, mostly pick-up trucks loaded with machine guns. But they were no match for America’s heavily armed Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. Crowds of Iraqis waved timidly at the passing American convoy but US officials admitted they still had to win over most of the city’s population.
”Frankly we’ve had to prove to the civilians in the north and the south that we’re there to stay. Once they know we’re there to stay, they celebrate,” said Jim Wilkinson, representative for General Tommy Franks, the US commander of the war.
Military sources said there still appear to be many Republican Guard troops in the city but out of uniform. ”Whether they are going to fight is a moot point,” one military source said. Some Iraqi fighters have been seen leaving the city in convoys of vehicles carrying civilians. Special forces troops are patrolling the roads to Jordan and Syria to stop any soldiers or regime figures trying to escape. ”We are being very careful about who goes in and who goes out.”
Six Iraqi fighters were killed yesterday on the southern outskirts of the city when US troops stopped what they suspected was a suicide attack on a military patrol. But despite the rapid advances of the weekend the Iraqi regime insisted it was defeating the American attack.
”After crushing the American and British aggression and invasion there will only be Iraq, headed by Saddam Hussein with all its traditions and all its institutions,” said Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraq’s information minister.
US forces have also destroyed what they called a terrorist training camp at Salman Pak, to the south-east of the capital. Gen Brooks said captured fighters from Sudan and Egypt had given information about training they had received at Salman Pak. ”It reinforces the likelihood of links between this regime and external terrorist organisations,” said Gen Brooks.
Tanks and armoured personnel carriers at the camp were destroyed in the raid on Saturday night as well as the buildings in the complex. Salman Pak is long suspected to have been a key chemical and biological weapons installation. – Guardian Unlimited Â