UMM QASR, 24 March 2003 — Iraqi soldiers put up stiff resistance for a fourth day yesterday at this strategic outpost bordering Kuwait despite the unequal firepower of US and British marines supported by tanks and attack helicopters.
“There are still pockets of resistance and we are going to clean them up,” a British sergeant told AFP on the edge of Iraq’s sole deep-water port of Umm Qasr.
The coalition forces launched the assault on the dust-blown town on Thursday, the first day of the war, but artillery was still crashing yesterday and columns of smoke rose over the center.
Tanks fired shells as machine-gun fire crackled out across the desert battlefield.
Despite the evident dangers, live pictures were beamed to world television screens from behind coalition lines.
Sunday morning four strong blasts shook the area, including in the Kuwaiti sector of Umm Qasr where war correspondents spent the night at offices of the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM), which withdrew its personnel on March 17. “The explosions are part of a helicopter operation to clear minefields around Umm Qasr,” the sergeant said, but gave no further details.
Military sources said Iraqi troops had holed up in a residential quarter of Umm Qasr from where they were firing at US-British troops.
Kuwaiti officials in the border town said Iraqi troops had launched a counterattack Sunday. “American and British soldiers riposted to the counterattack in the northwest of Umm Qasr,” one said.
“If the counterattack goes on, it will be ended by air power,” said another Kuwaiti official in contact with US and British military officers. “The situation is still dangerous,” an American officer said, advising this AFP journalist not to go further forward.
Television images showed black smoke billowing from the roof of a building from the Iraqi side of the frontline after taking a direct hit from an American M1 Abrams battle tank.
US Marines fighting in Umm Qasr, Iraq’s main seaport on its Gulf coastline of only 30 kilometers, were under the command of British troops. “We expected resistance and we met some, but it’s fairly light resistance to be honest,” Lt. Col. Ben Curry, spokesman for the Royal Marines 3 Commando Brigade, told the BBC. “They tend to fire a few shots and then melt away.”
However, he admitted that the task of taking the town had been complicated by Iraqi soldiers who had shed their military uniforms for civilian clothes and melted into the population.
Sergeant Chris Demuro of Fox Company, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said US forces were caught in a heavy Iraqi ambush the minute they burst through sand berms into Umm Qasr, the battle for which he said had left dozens of Iraqis already dead.
“They opened up with rockets, small arms and mortars and all hell broke loose when we came across the berm,” said Demuro.
“We called in artillery from British units behind us but the explosions were coming in so close we were forced to pull back — it was terrifying.
“There was more shooting as we got to the gates of the port and I must have fired about five rounds of suppressing fire with my M16 rifle. “Then ... the shout of ‘gas gas gas’ went up and there was chaos as we all tried to get into our gas masks in the middle of the fighting.”
Demuro said the port area — set away from the town’s residential quarter — surrendered within minutes of a massive display of firepower.
On Friday, British armed forces chief Admiral Sir Michael Boyce said Umm Qasr was in coalition hands, but the following day Baghdad insisted that its armed forces were still resisting. “Iraq fighters continue for the fourth consecutive day to inflict blows against the tyrants,” Iraq’s Information Minister Mohammad al-Sahhaf told a press conference in Baghdad.
“The American and British war criminals are in a dead-end in Umm Qasr,” which has been divided into Iraqi and Kuwait sections since 1992 as part of the carve-up which followed the Gulf war the previous year.
Umm Qasr, located on the western side of the Fao Peninsula on a canal opening to the Gulf, had been handling vessels carrying in food and other vital necessities under the UN-administered oil-for-food program.
Coalition forces say they have been reluctant to use heavy aerial bombardment to flatten the pockets of resistance for fear of destroying the port facilities, which they want to use to bring in humanitarian aid.
