Elite Iraqi guard stands between U.S., Baghdad

By Jeff Wilkinson, Ruby L. Bailey and Martin Merzer
Knight Ridder News Service

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait — U.S. Army soldiers edged closer to Baghdad yesterday, fighting from behind sandbags and punching through one front-line Republican Guard unit outside Saddam Hussein's capital.

U.S. Army soldiers from A Company 3rd Battalion 7th Infantry Regiment approach an injured woman who was caught in a crossfire with Iraqi forces when American troops seized a bridge over the Euphrates River near Al Hindiyah yesterday. The U.S. soldiers went onto the bridge despite the gunfire to help the woman to safety. Associated Press

"Where the regime is, we're coming," said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks.

Other officers warned that the war could prove bloodier than many Americans expect and they again raised the specter of U.S. troops confronting chemical or biological weapons.

"We're prepared to pay a very high price," said a senior official at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, who requested anonymity. "If that means there will be a lot of casualties, there will be a lot of casualties."

One U.S. soldier was reported killed yesterday in a battle in Najaf, bringing the U.S. death toll to 44, with many others wounded.

Total Iraqi military and civilian casualties could not be estimated, but U.S. officials said seven Iraqi women and children were killed by U.S. troops near Najaf when their van did not stop at a checkpoint as ordered and after warning shots were fired.

Other accounts said that three Iraqi men also died in the incident and that an Army unit delayed firing warning shots until the van was so close that it alarmed other soldiers who raked the vehicle with cannon fire.

Four Army soldiers died in a suicide car bombing in the same area on Saturday and U.S. troops have been on high alert for additional suicide bombings.

To reduce the threat to U.S. soldiers and prepare the battlefield, more airstrikes hammered areas in and around Baghdad early today. Eight thousand precision-guided weapons have been fired since the war began, 3,000 of them since Friday, the Pentagon said.

In Washington, the Pentagon claimed that relatives of Saddam were trying to flee the country and implicitly challenged Saddam to prove that he is alive.

"Since the coalition bombed Saddam's headquarters at the very beginning of the war, the world has neither seen his hide nor hair, only tapes," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said. "We've not seen his sons. We've seen evidence that family members are fleeing the country or trying to flee the country."

She refused to give evidence to back up her assertion.

As for Saddam's condition, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations said he believed that his nation's leader was alive.

"Where the regime is, we're coming," said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks. Associated Press

U.S. forces probed the outer circle of Baghdad's defenses as war planes relentlessly battered Iraqi positions in and around the capital. Among the targets struck yesterday: the presidential palace used by the commander of the Republican Guard — Saddam's son Qusai.

After several days of attempts, the bombardment finally knocked Iraqi television off the air, though only temporarily. Two planes destroyed an Iraqi military cable repeater station about 100 miles north of Baghdad to disrupt the regime's communications.

With major encounters on the horizon, the Army's 4th Infantry Division — with 30,000 U.S. combat and support troops — prepared to enter the war. That will mark the first large reinforcement of coalition troops since hostilities began.

The division's spokeswoman, Maj. Josslyn Aberle, said the first 500 troops and their equipment from Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, would disembark today in Kuwait.

She would not discuss the division's orders or how long it would take to deploy all of the unit's troops and 14,000 pieces of armored vehicles, fighting helicopters and other equipment.

But a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity that the division would be "pouring in" constantly over the next week or two, going directly into combat.

The division's equipment has been floating on ships in the Mediterranean for weeks because of Turkey's refusal to allow use of its bases as a staging area for a northern front. Now, the 4th Infantry will enter the war from the south.

"They are going to augment our forces at the front and fortify the rear areas," said one U.S. official, who requested anonymity. "They are a substantial combat multiplier. They'll give the Iraqis a wallop."

In southern Iraq, a measure of stability emerged as allied forces captured 200 Iraqi prisoners near Basra but still struggled to suppress the paramilitary fighters who have been striking supply lines with hit-and-run attacks.

In Samawah, a small city about 120 miles south of Baghdad, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division confronted mortar fire but rounded up more than 50 Iraqi prisoners.

"We've effectively cut off a good portion of what (the enemy) thinks he owns in the area," said Maj. Pete Wilhelm, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne.

A convoy of up to 700 civilian vehicles was spotted yesterday leaving Basra for relatively safe harbor in Umm Qasr. Officials believed that the vehicles carried families seeking refuge and humanitarian assistance in the British-controlled port.

In the southern town of Az Zubayr, British forces replaced their helmets with berets to signal that the fighting was over and the situation was returning to normal. A pickup game of soccer between local citizens and soldiers from the Duke of Wellington Regiment in the border town of Safwan was won by the visitors, 4-2.

Most of the day's action and suspense vibrated along the front lines, as elements of the 3rd Infantry moved within striking distance of Karbala, a strategic crossroads town southwest of Baghdad.

At least 8,000 members of the Republican Guard's Medina division are positioned between Karbala and Baghdad, reportedly in the Karbala Gap, an area between a large reservoir and the Euphrates River.

Inside Karbala, at least 4,000 Iraqi militia members and soldiers may be laying in wait, U.S. officers said. The Iraqis are also believed to have positioned several dozen tanks near the city, mainly vintage T-55s and T-62s.

As a result, U.S. jets and artillery continued around-the-clock strikes to soften up Iraqi defenses, including raids by B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers.

Smaller aircraft based aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in the Persian Gulf dropped more than 35,000 pounds of bombs, and aircraft from the USS Harry S. Truman in the eastern Mediterranean doubled their presence over Iraq.

Though Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery has been repeatedly hit near Baghdad, it apparently remains active there and elsewhere.

Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said one pilot described "a World War II sort of image, where wherever you turn or look or dodge, there's triple-A exploding around you."