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Posted on 04/14/2003 4:43:44 AM PDT by kattracks
There was no last stand for Saddam Hussein and his vaunted Republican Guard. U.S. troops faced skirmishes but no organized resistance as they rolled into Saddam's hometown of Tikrit yesterday.The city is the last frontier in the conquest of Iraq - and U.S. forces were bracing for Saddam and as many as 2,500 of Saddam's elite troops and fanatical Fedayeen militia to stage a bloody battle there.
But it wasn't to be.
Iraqi fighters forced north by a relentless U.S. advance from the south since the war began 26 days ago put up "very little" resistance, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"Apparently, an awful lot of the people there have fled," Rumsfeld told NBC. "There are people who do not have a lot of admiration for the Baathist regime that are there."
About 3,000 Marines traveled about 100 miles north from Baghdad overnight supported by Cobra attack helicopters and F-18 war planes — a show of force designed to overwhelm any resistance.
They destroyed an Iraqi tank column outside the city and cut down a platoon that dared to take them on.
"They came out of their holes to fight the Marines," Matthew Fisher, a Canadian reporter, told CNN. "About 15 Iraqis died in that exchange, no Americans."
The jets and helicopters repeatedly took out targets throughout the city, hovering and moving at will. The Marines withdrew at the end of the day to the edge of the city, and thrust back in at daybreak today.
Marine Capt. Stewart Upton, a spokesman for Central Command in Qatar, said this morning troops were in the city, adding: "It's a battle."
In launching the fight for Tikrit, the U.S. apparently ignored an appeal from 22 tribal leaders who called for a ceasefire so they could negotiate the Iraqi city's surrender.
Journalists entering the city ahead of the Marines found it eerily deserted, with few signs of the disorder that has beset other cities before the troops rolled in.
Only a handful of people roamed the streets, and shopkeepers worried about looters had emptied their shelves.
'Thirsty for peace'
In a nation that has seen homages to Saddam gleefully destroyed, a statue of the dictator on horseback in a plaza was left untouched, as were portraits of the dictator that line the streets.
Most of Tikrit's 60,000 inhabitants are Sunni Muslim, like Saddam, and most of the dictator's aides are from the city.
"Yes, we are pro-Saddam Hussein. As you know, he is a great leader," said Khalid Al Ahbad, a local businessman.
"Tikrit is very developed and full of culture," he added. "We are not thirsty for blood. ... We are thirsty for peace."
A reporter for Radio France Internationale told today's Washington Post that local people said most of the Iraqi military assigned to defend the city fled before the Marines even advanced, leaving behind tanks, trucks and artillery pieces.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. war commander, said it was premature to say the war had been won, adding: "Pockets of foreigners in Iraq ... have decided to fight to their last breath."
Elsewhere, in Najaf, south of Baghdad, frictions between rival Shiite Muslims erupted when armed men surrounded the home of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and gave him a day to leave town.
But by early today, Mohammad Baqir Mohri, an aide to Sistani, announced that "the siege has ended" and that "tribal leaders are now in control of the city."
With News Wire Services
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