Posted on 04/01/2003 9:40:01 AM PST by browardchad
KUWAIT CITY, April 1 (UPI) -- The war entered its decisive phase Tuesday as midday temperatures in central Iraq soared toward 100 degrees and U.S. forces advanced into Iraq's so-called Red Zone around Baghdad, where local commanders may have authority to use chemical weapons, coalition leaders say.
The best of Iraq's conventional forces, five Republican Guard divisions, have now been identified gathering south of Baghdad for what looks to be the decisive battle of the war. Coalition military intelligence sources add that a sixth RG Division, the al-Adnan, is also reported moving south from Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit to join them.
They are moving into a killing ground, the flood plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers south of Baghdad. It is a relatively confined battlefield where allied warplanes and combat helicopters now hover like predatory hawks to swoop on any target that shows itself. The clear weather conditions, and the coming of the heat of a desert summer, suggest that coalition commanders are pressing on to Baghdad without waiting for the expected reinforcement of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division.
Although no Iraqi chemical or biological weapons have yet been deployed or found, chemical alert and response units were close behind the forward U.S. troops Tuesday just in case. Large numbers of Iraqi gas masks and other protective gear have been found by advancing coalition forces, suggesting that Iraqi units are ready for chemical warfare.
The airstrikes against the dug-in RG units were backed up by the artillery from the U.S. 3rd Division, their shells now able range up to 10 miles from Baghdad itself. Units of the 3rd Division hooked around the key town of Karbala and established firing positions and pushed forward observation posts to bring direct fire only Iraqi defensive positions.
The 5 RG divisions are anchored on the Medina armored division, the strongest of all, which began the war with 20,000 troops and 270 of Iraq's most advanced Soviet-built T-72 tanks. They are outmatched by the U.S. M1-A1 Abrams tanks, which can pick them off at a distance while remaining out of rage of the T-72 guns -- if the visibility is clear enough.
Coalition spokesmen said Tuesday they believed the Medina division had lost up to a third of its force, and was reduced to filling its ranks with makeshift recruits rounded up from nearby villages. The remnants of another RG battalion surrendered to U.S. troops Tuesday, after days of battering from the air.
Two of the other RG divisions south of Baghdad, the Hamurabi and the Al-Nida, are armored units, but equipped with 1960s vintage T-62 tanks, and thought to number not much more than 10,000 troops each. The Baghdad mechanized infantry division, already worn down by a series of defensive battles against advancing U.S. Marines in the south, has been reinforced by the Nebuchadnezzar RG division which was brought down from Tikrit over the last week.
The objective of coalition commanders is to destroy these RG divisions where they stand, rather than let them fall back into Baghdad to stiffen the city's defenses. Once inside the city, where they can take cover from coalition air power, they could be a much more difficult to tackle than they are now on the relatively open ground south of Baghdad.
Coalition military sources said the advances upon Baghdad, and first ground war clashes with the Republican Guard, decisively refuted the media suggestions over the weekend of a pause in operations. They dismissed suggestions of a "race for Baghdad" between the two prongs of the U.S. advance, the Marines from the south and the 3rd Infantry Division from the southwest, noting one of the key breakthroughs to the town of Hindiya was achieved by the 101st Airborne.
"The 101st sent small reconnaissance teams by helicopter deep into Iraqi lines, where they spotted and targeted Iraqi positions and then called in artillery and air strikes," a military source in Kuwait told United Press International. "So when the main assault went in, the Iraqis had very little left to stop it."
The capture Monday of the bridge over the Euphrates at Hindiya means that the two advancing U.S. columns can now communicate directly, and coalition commanders can use it to seize tactical opportunities and push reinforcements from one front to the other.
Meanwhile in southern Iraq, British troops took the final bridge around Basra, virtually sealing off the city except for a small land route up the eastern bank of the Tigris. The British are still deliberately holding back from a full-scale assault on the city, but nibbling at its edges and raiding and bombing the buildings from which Saddam Hussein's loyalists try to maintain their grip on the city.
British Marines stepped up their patrols around Basra after two Iraqi Seersucker missiles, Russian-based projectiles modified from anti-ship missiles, were fired overnight. One landed close to the British prisoner of war camp outside Umm Qasr, where over 3,000 Iraqi prisoners are held. The other stuck close to a site previously occupied by the headquarters of the Royal Marine Commandos.
A missile related to the Seersucker, the Silkworm, hit a Kuwait City shopping mall over the weekend. No casualties were reported from the explosion, which occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Michael
I assume this means JDAMs behind their lines while marines and soldiers assault them from the front.
This could be a new chapter in warfare entirely.
Michael
I heard this morning that RG had already come south from Tikrit -- not very far, I'd guess, or just far enough to cut off retreat.
I hadn't heard about the two silkworms fired in the south, mentioned at the end.
Yes, they've been talking about the RG moving South as if that's a bad thing
...come into my house, said the spider to the fly.
My favorite Major Bobism was that the "operational pause" was like a butcher sharpening his knife before starting work. Even the Fox crew got quiet.
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