BAGHDAD, 24 March 2003 — Iraq insisted President Saddam Hussein remained in control yesterday as British and US forces launched new airraids on the capital and pressed their march through the south, but were forced to abandon plans to use bases in Turkey to open a northern front.
Coalition commanders said their troops were pouring across the Euphrates River after capturing the town of Nasiriyah, which controls a key bridging point a third of the way to Baghdad from the Kuwaiti border.
A strong explosion shook the Iraqi capital early yesterday, the latest in the daily dose of aerial bombardment by US-led forces. The Iraqi regime asserted battle successes and maintained Saddam and his sons had “the aggression” in hand.
One blast rattled buildings several hours after midnight. Thunderous explosions struck throughout Saturday, sending towers of smoke into the air.
Iraqi state television reported that airstrikes Saturday also hit the city of Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown and a stronghold of support. The report said five civilians were killed and four wounded.
State television admitted a ruling Baath Party official had been killed in fighting near the city of Najaf, just 200 km south of the capital.
But it carried pictures of a smiling Saddam in military uniform meeting a war council of top advisors, who reported Iraqi troops were fending off US and British forces in the south with “resistance and heroism.”
The report said the meetings dealt with “the aggression.” The report said Saddam and the others reviewed the situation in Umm Qasr, Al-Rumeila, Al-Faw and Nasiriyah — places where US-led coalition troops have battled Iraqi troops.
An intense bombardment of Baghdad began around 2030 GMT Saturday, and several neighborhoods were briefly plunged into darkness as electricity supplies were cut.
Several fierce blasts rocked the capital where the United States has been pounding away at key symbols of Saddam’s 24-year iron grip on power, and orange fireballs lit the sky.
But the strikes seemed to be pinpoint attacks and there was none of the ferocity that marked an all-out “shock and awe” raid Friday that Iraq said killed three people and wounded more than 200. On the ground, US and British forces said thousands of Iraqi troops had surrendered, but the allies said they encountered stiff resistance in some parts of the southern desert.
US Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who is orchestrating the assault from the Southern Command base in Qatar, said troops were bypassing the southern metropolis of Basra in their lightning march on the capital.
“Our intent is not to move through and create a military confrontation in that city,” Franks told a press conference.
Troops had spotted no major concentration of Iraqi firepower in Basra and would prefer to work with civilians there “who are welcoming the forces as they come in,” Franks said.
Speaking alongside Franks at the command center in Qatar, US Army Brig.-Gen. Vince Brooks said forces were moving fast toward Baghdad.
“The attack continues as we speak and has already moved the distance of the longest maneuver of the 1991 Gulf War in a quarter of the time,” said Brooks.
Franks said the coalition had taken 1,000 to 2,000 Iraqi prisoners of war in the opening days of their drive on Baghdad, and that thousands of others had “laid down their arms and gone home.” But despite the desertions, elements of the Iraqi Armed Forces continued to put up dogged resistance in the key deep-water port of Umm Qasr two days after its fall to the coalition.
British and US troops were locked in fighting with Iraqi commandos, some in civilian clothes, a Marine officer said.
Scenes of intense clashes were broadcast live on Western news channels yesterday morning. “The city is under control, but there are various organized groups offering resistance on the outskirts,” said Lt. Col. Steve Holmes.
In the northern Kuwaiti desert, one US paratrooper was killed and 12 wounded in a grenade attack apparently carried out by one of their own comrades early yesterday inside a US military camp.
In northern Iraq, coalition warplanes launched new air raids on the main city of Mosul early yesterday, the Arabic satellite television Al-Jazeera reported.
At least three separate raids were heard around the city during the night, the television’s correspondent there said.
But yesterday, Washington finally dropped plans to open up a northern front from Turkey after Turkey’s Parliament, which opened its air space to allied planes, refused to allow troops to cross its soil.
Some 25 ships carrying the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division’s heavy hardware, waiting to disembark in Turkey, came about and headed for the Gulf via the Suez Canal and Red Sea. However a senior Kurdish rebel leader said his militiamen were poised to join US forces in opening a new front.
“The northern front will soon be opened,” said Hoshyar Zebari, external relations director of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of two Kurdish groups that have controlled northern Iraq for the past 12 years.
“We’re working very closely with the Americans,” Zebari told a press conference, days after the United States announced that Kurdish fighters would come under its military command.
But continued Turkish threats to invade the north unilaterally complicated coalition planning. Turkish troops were reported to have entered Kurdish-held territory, defying US insistence that such a deployment would be “unhelpful,” although Ankara denied it.
The issue is highly sensitive because Iraqi Kurds, who have enjoyed de facto autonomy since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, have warned they will resist any incursions by Turkey, which has long fought guerrillas from its own Kurdish minority.
The security situation also deteriorated sharply in the east of Iraqi Kurdistan after massive coalition air raids on two Islamist groups Saturday sparked reprisals which cost the life of an Australian journalist.
In Washington, the Pentagon said secret “discussions” were under way with members of the Iraqi high command and that there was still time for them “to do the right thing.” Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke would not elaborate on the contacts except to say that the United States has been holding “a variety of conversations and discussions” with Iraqi leaders. Anti-war demonstrations raged on around the world, with hundreds of thousands of taking to the streets in Europe, the United States and Canada.
Signs and slogans in Washington were careful not to feed war supporters’ arguments that protest in a time of war is unpatriotic. Protesters carried signs saying: “We support our troops — bring them home!”
