Advancing to within 50 miles of Baghdad, U.S. forces on Monday faced determined opposition from Iraqis who attacked from almost every direction. Americans lost at least one attack helicopter in a savage firefight and were drawn into a street battle for control of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.
Allied air forces began focusing attacks on the military units standing between U.S. ground troops and the Iraqi capital. They are believed to include divisions of the Republican Guard, Saddam Hussein’s most loyal and most experienced soldiers.
Behind the front lines, American and British forces struggled to contain guerrillas in the southern cities of Basra and Nasiriyah, where Marines fought in the streets against an unknown number of Iraqis, many of them in civilian clothes.
“These things are never easy,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose country suffered its first infantry combat casualty. “There will be some difficult times ahead, but [the war] is going to plan despite the tragedies.”
Hussein appeared in full military uniform on state-run television, exhorting Iraqis to have patience and to fight back. “God has ordered you to cut their throats,” he said. Allied officials said it was unclear when the tape was made.
Iraqi television also broadcast images of two more American POWs, the crew of the helicopter that was lost in battle. The film reignited complaints from U.S. officials that such broadcasts violate the Geneva Conventions.
In Washington, White House aides said President Bush would ask Congress for $75 billion to finance the war’s opening stages and would meet with Blair this week to discuss progress.
Five days into the ground war, the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division was within 50 miles of Baghdad, traveling slowly through sandstorms. Air Force and Navy jets tried to pave their way, pummeling Iraqi units around the capital. Iraqis set up mortars in the south of the city and piled sandbags around government buildings.
Blair told the British Parliament that he expected U.S. troops to soon face the Republican Guard’s Medina Division. “This will be a crucial moment,” he said.
As U.S. troops advanced, Iraqi fighters out of uniform and driving non-military vehicles continued harassing them. In some cases, men riding in rusty pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in back opened fire on allied troops.
The result is an invading force that now must confront the possibility of danger in any meeting with Iraqis.
Progress called rapid
At Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks said the allied forces had purposely bypassed enemy formations in their sprint to Baghdad, and, as a result, such ambushes were not unexpected. He said his troops’ progress was “rapid and in some cases dramatic.”
But in Nasiriyah, where a day earlier at least nine Marines died in the war’s bloodiest ground fighting, the strategy of skirting urban areas appeared to be abandoned. Marines pounded their way into the center of the city, struggling to distinguish civilians from paramilitary guerrilla fighters.
A helicopter battle near Karbala in central Iraq likely represented U.S. troops’ first showdown with the Republican Guard. U.S. commanders said they knocked out about 10 Iraqi tanks and other vehicles, but pilots said they faced withering fire.
“I got shot front, back, left and right,” one said. The pilots said much of the fire appeared to come from the roofs of civilian buildings, underscoring the dangers of urban fighting.
The Iraqi information minister said “a small number of farmers” had shot down two of the 30 to 40 attacking Apaches. Iraqi TV showed one Apache, surrounded by dancing, rifle-waving Iraqis, and later showed pictures of the two-man crew.
U.S. officials said they were missing only one helicopter. The Pentagon later said it was destroyed by subsequent allied missions.
“I can assure you . . . that those events did not occur as the result of farmers,” Franks said.
Bombing reported in north
In northern Iraq, witnesses reported heavy bombing for the third day in a row around the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. Reporters said they saw Iraqi dead being carried away in trucks from a ridgeline near Kirkuk that was hammered by U.S. aircraft.
A U.S. Marine general arrived in the region’s Kurdish enclave, another signal that allied forces are preparing to open a new front in the ground war. Maj. Gen. Henry Osman told reporters that he had met not only with pro-U.S. Kurdish militia but also with military officers from neighboring Turkey.
Turkey has vowed to send troops into the self-ruled Kurdish zone despite U.S. opposition. Allied commanders fear Turkish troops would clash with the Kurds and destabilize the region.
In southern Iraq, parts of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division pulled out of the area around As Samawah and headed for a patch of desert where they planned to hook up with members of the 101st Airborne Division and create a staging area for a push into the capital.
They said they left behind smoking wrecks that used to be Iraqi tanks, armored vehicles and artillery emplacements. But they warned that the fighting would go on in the town.
“We feel it’s secure enough for us to leave,” said Lt. Col. Jeff Ingram. “The strategy is to cut off their supply lines and their ability to get new equipment, and we have done that.”
As the army pushed toward Baghdad, the roads clogged. Near Najaf, nearly 3,000 vehicles lined up in a miles-long procession. “Looks like a traffic jam in Atlanta,” said Capt. Chris Carter of Watkinsville, Ga.
Soldiers remained on constant alert following reports of Iraqi ruses. Staff Sgt. Matthew Muller, 24, of Tucson, Ariz., said that as he scouted around a school in As Samawah, a man approached his vehicle waving and saying hello in broken English.
Muller said he waved back, and the man disappeared behind a concrete barrier. He reappeared with a grenade launcher and fired.
“He was a poor shot,” Muller said. “It was near me, though, and I had to jump out of the way. Then we called in some air support over that site, and I presume that took care of him.”
Suffering in cities
The standoffs around cities and towns created additional concerns. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he had heard reports from the Red Cross that Basra’s population of 1.4 million had been without power or electricity for four days, setting up what he called a potential “humanitarian disaster.”
The surrounding area, once thought secured, remained perilous. Britain’s first combat death occurred on the sniper-plagued road between Basra and the Kuwait border. Two other British soldiers were reported missing.
American companies brought in to snuff burning oil wells in southern Iraq were driven away after Iraqis dressed as civilians attacked British forces near the oil fields.
“It’s not nearly as safe as they said it was,” said Brian Krause, vice president and senior blowout specialist for Boots and Coots, a Houston company. “We’re kind of sitting ducks out there.”
In the Persian Gulf, carrier-based pilots were instructed to strike “targets of opportunity”–emerging targets such as Iraqi troops standing between allied forces and Baghdad.
There was “a serious amount of ordnance dropped in the Baghdad area” on Monday, said Lt. Cmdr. Mike Peterson, 34, an F-14 flight leader on the USS Constellation.
But as they have on the ground, logistics in the air pose a challenge. Hundreds of allied aircraft can be in the region’s airspace at one time. Peterson said he had 30 minutes to find and strike targets on his Monday sortie.
“I didn’t drop anything,” he said.
U.S. officials confirmed that a convoy of Syrian refugees had been struck by an allied bomb in western Iraq, killing five people and injuring 15. During a Pentagon briefing, Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the bomb was aimed at a bridge and the bus had pulled onto the bridge after the weapon was on its way.
