Posted on 03/31/2003 7:11:02 AM PST by JohnHuang2
US says controlling movement in Iraq western desert
AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar, March 31 (Reuters) - U.S. special forces are in control of movement across Iraq's western desert, a senior U.S. commander said on Monday.
"We are denying freedom of movement throughout the western desert and are being very effective at it," Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a news briefing in Qatar.
U.S. officials have said two airfields in the western desert were seized by U.S. forces in the early stages of the war.
Analysts have said the H2 and H3 airfields -- named after pumping stations on a disused oil pipeline to the Mediterranean -- could become useful staging posts for U.S. and British troops and supplies to add pressure on Baghdad.
Travellers arriving at the Jordanian border on the main highway from Baghdad have reported a U.S. military checkpoint midway along the road in the western desert.
"We saw American soldiers about halfway along the road," said Lola Osman, 43, from Djibouti, who fled the Iraqi capital with her six children on Sunday via the main 550-km (340-mile) desert highway between Baghdad and the Jordanian border.
"They stopped the vehicle, and came and asked questions and then said 'Go on'," she said on Monday in a tent in a Jordanian transit camp near the town of Ruweished which has been set up for expatriates fleeing Iraq.
She said some vehicles ahead of her bus had been allowed to pass through, although the passengers had been asked to step out of their vehicles and were searched.
Some travellers reaching Jordan said they had been stopped at the checkpoint a few days earlier and were initially turned back. But they had then either taken an old road to reach Jordan or had been allowed to pass later.
May Petah have a tough time trying to hitch hike out of Baghdad.
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