Posted on 04/01/2003 3:15:28 AM PST by kattracks
About 10 huge cargo planes an hour - packed with heavy armor, trucks, Humvees and troops - landed at a makeshift northern Iraq airstrip controlled by U.S. troops over the last 24 hours, officials said yesterday.The steady stream of planes included C-17 Globemasters, big enough to carry an Abrams tank, and C-130s.
The giant planes hit the airstrip, disgorged their load and were back in the air in 30 minutes, officials said.
A few miles away yesterday, coalition war planes pounded Iraqi positions to aid U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters as they seized territory in preparation for an advance by coalition troops.
A key mission for the troops in northern Iraq will be to ensure that the Iraqi regime doesn't sabotage oil fields.
Hoshiar Zebari, a leader of the governing Kurdistan Democratic Party, said limited U.S. ground operations have begun around the oil-rich, northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
Far fewer Iraqi troops were visible outside Kirkuk than in recent days, indicating that the enemy may be retreating toward Mosul, the largest northern city.
Reporters near Kirkuk estimated that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's army had pulled back 20 miles since Thursday and now occupies only the innermost of three defensive lines around the city.
The effects of the U.S. bombardment were made clear yesterday by the sobbing Iraqi deserter who fled for his life to the Kurdish lines to surrender.
He was among at least 18 Iraqi fighters who staggered into Kalak on Friday. They used an undershirt as a surrender flag.
He said his unit of about 30 men slept in muddy burrows on a hillside. Breakfast was tea and crusty bread. Lunch was rice and a single cucumber to share between two soldiers. There was no dinner.
U.S. bombs had killed at least five of his comrades, and about the same number were wounded. "There is no medical help," he added. "They are left to die."
"The spirit of the soldiers is very low," he said. "We were not really mad at the Americans. We just want to save our lives."
Elsewhere in the north, a U.S.-led assault on a compound of an Islamic Iraqi group turned up a list of names of suspected militants living in the U.S.
The cache of documents, including computer records and passports, yielded perhaps the strongest evidence yet linking Ansar al-Islam to 9/11 terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden.
With Thomas M. DeFrank
So how big will be the coalition presence in the N. Iraq ? An armored brigade ?
Hopefully, they won't have much fight left in them by the time we finish the build-up. I still think a lot of these guys just want to live long enough to surrender.
Arse Whippin Time
The steady stream of planes included C-17 Globemasters, big enough to carry an Abrams tank, and C-130s.
Isn't a C-130 another transport plane? Can you get a C130 inside a C17 ? I doubt it!
So what is the one disembarking on Kuwaiti shore ? A bogus 4th ID or some other division ?
Yes, this seems like about the right time for them. I recall the stories from Germany in late January and early February about how all of the Rhine River heavy freight barges had been hired to move heavy equipment north to the sea. There were also reports of trains moving north to the sea filled with tanks and heavy equipment. There was a lot of talk about maybe the heavy divisions never returning to Germany, like after Gulf War 1.
Makes it sound like a C-17 can carry one Abrams tank and at least two C-130s at the same time. Now that is one big airplane!
Plus maybe would have been sabotaged and protested against by Turkey's homegrown Jihadists and Muslomaniacs.
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