BAGHDAD, 13 April 2003 — US commanders said yesterday a large number of Marines were heading north of Baghdad toward Tikrit, a traditional stronghold of Saddam Hussein and the last major bastion of his troops.
In Baghdad, US forces fought off an attack on the west bank of the Tigris River yesterday evening, and said they had seized one of the last remaining strongholds of Arab “mujahideen” in the city.
The push toward Tikrit came as forward elements of the 4th Infantry Division crossed from Kuwait into Iraq, according to the US Central Command.
“Tikrit is one of the areas where we still have concerns that there may be presence of regime forces and we have been relentless in our efforts focused at the Tikrit area,” Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at the war command’s headquarters in Qatar.
Another military spokesman, Capt. Frank Thorp said a significant number of US Marines left Baghdad and were heading north.
“We have been using air power on the military forces for more than a week. Only time will tell when we get into Tikrit or any of the other areas,” said Thorp.
Saddam’s native city, Tikrit is the last major target on US battle maps, though military officials say they are also expect resistance in other parts of Iraq.
Correspondents on the eastern side of the river, around the Palestine Hotel, heard heavy machine-gun and tank fire from US forces across the river.
The exchange lasted around 20 minutes.
US Marine Sgt. Daniel Finn said the enemy opened fire on US troops from six bunkers on the western bank.
“We’re not sure how many of them there were, but they opened fire and now they’re dead,” he said, adding that he guessed there were 15 to 20 Iraqis or other nationals involved.
Earlier, US troops took control of Mansur district in western Baghdad, previously a stronghold of non-Iraqi Arab volunteer fighters who came to Iraq to help defend against the US and British invasion.
US Army Staff Sgt. David Richards said there had been considerable resistance in the area from remnants of paramilitary forces and foreign Arab volunteers in the past three days, but opposition petered out yesterday morning.
While tanks took up positions near the sprawling Zawra gardens on the west bank of the Tigris, looters could be seen ransacking nearby ministry buildings, making off with office furniture and computers.
In the densely populated northeastern slum area of Saddam City, US Marines pulled back to allow local people to hunt “mujahideen” volunteer fighters holed up in the area.
“The locals said they wanted to take charge of Saddam City and we said: ‘Roger that’,” Lt. Col. Lew Craparotta, commander of a Marine unit that moved back from the fringes of the suburb, said.
Craparotta said it was not clear how many “third country nationals”, as the US describes them, were in Saddam City.
Iraq has said thousands of volunteers from across the Arab world came to the country to help fight the US-led invasion.
Local militia and the “mujahideen” fought fiercely through Friday night until after dawn, with the sound of sustained small arms and heavy machinegun fire suggesting substantial clashes between the two groups. US forces were not involved.
Craparotta said a Marine was killed and another injured in an ambush on Friday in the northern sector his unit has moved into.
The attack has been blamed on remnants of the Saddam Fedayeen, an irregular force loyal to the president that harassed US troops throughout their three-week march northward from Kuwait to Baghdad.
Separately, a Marine was killed yesterday when a gunman dressed in civilian clothes opened fire on US troops guarding a hospital near the Palestine Hotel.
British commanders, meanwhile, said they deployed a significant number of soldiers to the city of Al-Amara, on the Iranian border, where they searched chemical weapons and underground chambers said to be holding Iraqi and Kuwaiti prisoners from the last Gulf War.
US-British forces detained 59 men who had letters offering rewards for killing US soldiers and carried a total of $630,000 in cash, according to Brooks.
“At a checkpoint in the west, coalition special operations forces stopped a bus with 59 military-aged men travelling west,” Brooks said.
He said he did not have any information on the nationalities of the men nor any details on who the letters they were carrying were from. Arab volunteers from across the Middle East came to Iraq to help fight the US-led invasion.
