BAGHDAD, 6 April 2003 — No US troops were visible in a tour of central and southern Baghdad yesterday after a US military spokesman said US forces had pushed into the heart of the Iraqi capital, a Reuters witness said.
“I went to the southern outskirts, southeast, southwest, the presidential palaces, the main security buildings,” correspondent Khaled Yacoub Oweis said after driving around part of the capital of five million people. “I saw no American troops.”
He said that he saw Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries on the streets preparing for war in the city 17 days into a US-led invasion from the south.
Heavy artillery fire could be heard. Earlier, a US military spokesman said that US forces had thrust into the heart of Baghdad and said the push was “more than a patrol that goes in and comes back out”.
“We do now have troops in the city of Baghdad ... they’re in the middle of the city of Baghdad,” Capt. Frank Thorp told Reuters at Central Command in Qatar. “We will continue to move.”
US forces also said that more than 20 battle tanks drove up the main highway into the outskirts of Baghdad and then swung out again to join other US forces at the airport, 20 km southwest of the center.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeef Al-Sahaf told a regular daily news conference in central Baghdad yesterday that Iraqi forces were firmly in control of the city. “You can go and visit those places,” he said, asked about the reports of a US advance. “Nothing there, nothing there at all. There are Iraqi checkpoints. Everything is okay.”
He also said that Iraq had ousted US forces from the airport, which US forces say they captured on Friday. He said that US-led forces had tried to make airborne landings in the capital to divert attention from that battle. “Today they staged a huge drama to lessen the pressure on their forces around the airport,” he said. “They did everything crazy.”
On the west bank of the Tigris River where most government buildings are based, quiet had returned after a tense morning, enforced by patrolling soldiers and other heavily armed men.
Many of them were seen heading toward Saddam International Airport on the southwestern outskirts of the city, which US forced announced they captured Friday and now held “secure”.
The city seemed strangely normal in the afternoon. While some militia fighters equipped with automatic weapons and anti-tank rocket launchers manned city intersections, others were less visible, holed up in entrenched positions.
Soldiers and elite Republican Guard members and militiamen were posted at a major intersection leading out of the city but appeared as steely nerved as ever.
In the Dora-Yarmuk in the southwest of the city, there were traces of combat earlier in the day, including blown-up cars and casings of heavy machine guns where Iraqi armored tanks and anti-aircraft artillery had been that morning.
Paramilitary forces, dressed in black and carrying AK-47 assault rifles and grenades, headed toward the outskirts of the Iraqi capital while soldiers in full combat gear dug in around the city.
Trailers and buses full of Saddam’s Fedayeen, the black-attired paramilitary forces under the command of Saddam’s eldest son Uday, drove south on one thoroughfare.
“Move out of the way,” they shouted as they sped away from a military compound, touting AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers and clutching Chinese-made hand grenades. Armored personnel carriers were also driving south.
Shops in normally busy districts, such as New Baghdad, were almost all shut, and far fewer cars were on the roads. Long queues formed at petrol stations still open. What cars there were sped faster than usual. Drivers, who rarely give Baghdad traffic lights much respect, ignored them completely.
