Posted on 04/03/2003 11:43:40 AM PST by HAL9000
Advancing U.S. troops seized Saddam International Airport outside Baghdad with little opposition as night fell on Iraq Thursday.Also, the lights went out in Baghdad in what appeared to be the first city-wide blackout since the Iraq invasion began two weeks ago. It wasn't clear why power was lost, and the Pentagon said that coalition forces hadn't targeted the electrical grid in the Iraqi capital.
Tanks from the 3-69 Battalion of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division swept onto the airfield at Baghdad's airport at 7:30 p.m. local time (11:30 a.m. E.S.T.) and reported the airport secured 15 minutes later. Infantry troops took up defensive positions on the airfield, which is about 12 miles southwest of Baghdad.
Marines, approaching Baghdad from the southeast, are within 18 miles of the Iraqi capital. Neither the Army nor the Marine advance encountered serious resistance
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf disputed the reports of battlefield successes. "All this is to cover their disappointment and inability," he said at a Baghdad news conference. He added that 14 people died in coalition air attacks in Baghdad Thursday morning.
Earlier, he appeared on Iraqi television and read a statement from Saddam, praising Iraqi resistance around the city of Kut. "Fight them with your hands, God will disgrace them. God is great," the statement said.
The easy advance of U.S. troops suggests that the Iraqis have lost the ability to coordinate their forces. But they also may be preparing to resort to guerrilla tactics, said Capt. Pat Sullivan, 28, of Dumfries, Va., the commander of Cobra Company of the 11th Combat Engineers.
Iraqi soldiers may retreat to Baghdad for urban warfare rather than risk a head-on clash outside the city. The lack of resistance worries some on the battlefield.
"I don't know if that's a good thing or not because sooner or later we have to run into this dude's army somewhere," said Capt. John Whyte, 31, of Billerica, Mass., an Apache Company commander in the Army's Third Infantry Division.
In the air, pilots used what military officials called "air interdiction" to try to keep Iraqi divisions north of Baghdad from reinforcing the front lines south of the city.
"Whenever they try to move south," one official said, "they get pummeled."
Overnight, special operations forces raided one of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein?s palaces and other key sites.
Setting down in a helicopter under cover of night, the special operations troops blew their way into the a palace on Lake Tharthar about 55 miles northwest of Baghdad, U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters in Qatar. They seized documents, which may provide valuable intelligence.
The two-and-a-half-square mile compound is second in size only to the presidential residence in Tikrit, Saddam?s hometown.
Also last night, conventional troops raided two headquarters of Saddam?s ruling Baath Party, Brooks said.
The successes of the advance were tempered overnight with word that a Black Hawk helicopter went down and a U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet was apparently lost near Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad.
All six aboard the helicopter were reported dead. The cause of the crash is under investigation, but doesn?t appear to be a result of hostile fire, Brooks said.
The F-18 Hornet may have been brought down with an Iraqi surface-to-air or a surface-to-surface missile, military officials said. There was no immediate word on the fate of the pilot.
Lt. Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, said the Hornet had flown a bombing mission over northern Iraq Wednesday. Other planes flying over Iraq at the same time reported seeing surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery fire in the same area in which the plane disappeared.
In northern Iraq, almost around-the-clock air attacks appear to have driven some Iraqi troops from outlying defensive positions closer to the cities of Mosul, Kirkuk and Tikrit, said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, aboard the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.
"I wouldn't be surprised if sometime here shortly we might even see some capitulation by some units, possibly some folks trying to surrender," he said. In central Iraq, Iraqi forces fired three unguided rockets that landed near the holy city of Najaf, U.S. Central Command said. American officials have been criticizing Iraqis for firing from the city's Ali mosque, a religious shrine.
Also Thursday, a Marine from Task Force Tarawa died in a power line accident. The member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was manning a.50-caliber rifle on top of a 7-ton truck, when it passed low-hanging power lines. The incident is under investigation.
Go Troops Go...MUD
bwahahaha!
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