Posted on 04/05/2003 4:42:00 AM PST by Walkin Man
Coalition Troops Near Center of Baghdad April 5 2003
By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer
NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq - Substantial numbers of coalition troops were near the center of Baghdad on Saturday and had no plans to pull back, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said.
"As of this morning, coalition forces are actually in the city of Baghdad," said Navy Capt. Frank Thorp. "As we moved into the city, we saw sporadic fighting, we've actually moved through the Republican Guard divisions to pretty much the center of the city."
"We have substantial forces now moving into the city," he said.
Asked if the U.S. Army's V Corps were on a probing mission, Thorp said, "they're not coming out."
"That's not the intent to come back out," he said. "They're in Baghdad."
Thorp said the best way to classify the situation in the city is that it was under control despite sporadic fighting.
"We'll continue to operate where we find opportunities to move forward, we'll move forward," he said. "Its been a steady deliberate pace as we move forward."
He declined to be specific on how many troops were moving in the city.
But he said that elements of the 1st Marines Expeditionary Force had penetrated the Al Nida division of the Republican Guard on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad.
Before the ground forces drove to the center of Baghdad, U.S. tanks and armored vehicles had rolled into the Iraqi capital Saturday morning for the first time, making reconnaissance probes as Marines and infantry on the city edges fought to impose a "choke hold" on President Saddam Hussein's seat of power.
Elements of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division earlier conducted brief incursions into Baghdad. Some units then left the city, heading farther south to conduct search and destroy missions against Republican Guard forces.
In the town of Suwayrah, about 35 miles southeast of Baghdad, Army soldiers captured the headquarters of the Republican Guard's Medina Division. They rolled in unopposed and quickly took over the entire base. It appeared that the Republican Guard defenses had completely collapsed.
Bunkers, foxholes and dozens of artillery pieces, anti-aircraft guns, tanks, and armored personnel carriers were abandoned. The officer's parking lot was empty. Hundreds of young men in civilian clothes stood by the side of the road, waving at the U.S. troops.
"Look at all the Republican Guard waving at us," Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings of Sarasota, Fla. quipped to his company commander, Capt. Chris Carter of Watkinsville, Ga.
"I bet they had their civilian clothes with them," replied Carter.
The Medina division headquarters was heavily damaged by U.S. airstrikes before the company's arrival.
The forays came while U.S. forces were moving in a pincer from two sides toward the capital. With artillery thundering overhead, Marines pushed through Iraqi fire to within a few miles of Baghdad's southeastern edge early Saturday.
From the southwest, Army soldiers who a day earlier seized the airport 10 miles from downtown Baghdad battled Iraqis on the highways leading into the capital.
At the airport Lt. Col. Lee Fetterman, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Brigade, of the 101st Airborne Division, said there have been several hundred people killed there so far. He said some of the bodies were the remains of would-be suicide attackers with bombs strapped to them.
Black smoke poured into the sky over parts of Baghdad from fires set to obscure targets, and loud explosions were heard throughout the morning, punctuated by bursts of machine gun fire. In the past 24 hours, with U.S. forces nearing, Baghdad had taken on the look of a city under siege, with soldiers digging trenches and foxholes along the highway leading south
Throughout the night, the barrage of airstrikes and artillery on the city's edges rattled car alarms downtown. Tens of thousands of residents fled for the north and northeast on Friday.
The U.S. drive aimed to isolate the capital, spokeswoman Air Force Capt. Dani Burrows said at U.S. Central Command in Qatar. "They're pretty much cut off in all directions," she said. "Pretty much what you've got here is a choke hold around Baghdad."
"Now they see tanks in their streets and these types of visuals ... That's a very big, deep and not so good psychological impact for the regime," said James Wilkinson, a Central Command spokesman, told CNN.
Though U.S. troops are not immediately on the northern edges of Baghdad, Burrows said Iraqi lines of flight were cut off in that direction. No substantial American force is known to be on the city's northern or eastern outskirts.
Facing stiff resistance, Marines moved slowly Saturday morning toward Baghdad's edge along Highway 7, which parallels the Tigris River. The grinding of shells sailed over their heads overnight as howitzers behind them pounded Iraqi positions.
The Iraqis were fighting mostly with small weapons Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades suggesting they were mostly Saddam's Fedayeen fighters, rather than regular army or Republican Guards. Marines said they were also coming across many non-Iraqi fighters mostly Jordanians and Egyptians.
The U.S. commander of the air war said Friday that the Iraqi military had "very few organized forces left" after days of heavy pounding from coalition warplanes.
"We're not softening them up," Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his base in Saudi Arabia. "We're destroying them."
Iraq (news - web sites) threatened a counterattack against Baghdad's airport after U.S. infantry took it in a pre-dawn assault Friday. Soldiers were searching for Iraqi holdouts in tunnels beneath the airfield.
There were battles Friday afternoon along the roads between the airport and Baghdad's edge though it was not clear if the Iraqis had launched an organized offensive. "There was lots of smoke and fire all along the roads leading into Baghdad, around the airport in particular," said Lt. Cmdr. Mark Johnson, a pilot who flew over the area in a bombing run. CNN reported that more than 400 Iraqis were killed during a tank fight north and east of the airport.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said the coalition forces at the airport would not get out alive. He threatened an "unconventional" attacks involving "commando and martyrdom operations in a very new, creative way."
Iraqi forces may gather up civilians to assault the airport in a "human tide," warned Air Marshal Brian Burridge, the British commander in the Gulf. He told the British Broadcasting Corp. that "there were loudspeakers in southwest Baghdad signaling people should rise up and march on the airport."
During Friday's advance, most confrontations lasted only minutes. One Army company took out 20 Iraqi tanks trying to move north to defend Baghdad. Soldiers encountered a Republican Guard unit near a vegetable patch outside Baghdad; 30 seconds of cannon fire ended the fight with two Guard members wounded and two others surrendering.
"We got bombed last night, and most of our tanks were destroyed," said one of the prisoners, speaking through an interpreter. He and the other prisoner had ditched their Guard uniforms for civilian clothes.
Between Kut and Baghdad, Marines reported that about 2,500 Republican Guards had surrendered.
On Friday night, U.S. troops patrolling checkpoints south of Baghdad found an ambulance left behind after an accident. Inside, along with a stretcher, were rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, military uniforms and helmets.
LOL
Isn't Chris Carter the guy who rescued that old, wounded Iraqi woman on that bridge while under fire from Iraqi forces? Pretty cool.
LOL!
Whats happening right now looks pretty beautiful to me!
I wonder how the free people of Iraq will feel about these Saddam supporters? Hopefully they will pay them back with bullets!
I think the (predictable) leftism and defeatism of the media, especially CNN, was part of the operational plan.
The Iraqi command has no air or space assets and poor land communication.
And they're stupid.
So it was a reasonable assumption that they would be using CNN, Sky, and the BBC to get our "secret" operational information.
CENTCOM didn't even have to lie to the press. They were confident that the "quagmire", the "thin supply lines", the "unexpectedly strong Iraqi resistance", the "operational pause", the "bogged down American forces", the "conflict at the Pentagon" stories were already written and just were waiting to be broadcast right into Baghdad.
And they were correct. Whoever thought up the imbeds should get a medal.
Yup, that was a great idea. It really shot down enemy and New York Times..etc propaganda.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.