Iraqi regime's collapse 'days' away after raids

By John Daniszewski, Tony Perry and Geoffrey Mohan
Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. Army troops captured one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces and fired on another in the center of this isolated, faltering capital, as American military intelligence said the collapse of the Iraqi president's regime was only days away.

U.S. Marines rush into battle against Iraqi gunmen on the outskirts of Baghdad. Nearly 25,000 Marines of the 1st Marine Division linked up yesterday with thousands of soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division in and around the capital. Associated Press

Resistance came mainly from small-arms fire as a column of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles rolled into the city shortly after dawn. Elements of the 3rd Infantry Division entered the New Presidential Palace, and five tanks and several Bradleys fired at the Old Palace. Columns of black smoke rose from the buildings and gunfire rattled through the city.

The raid last night Hawai'i time, the second in three days, came after U.S. Marines, nearly 25,000 strong, linked up with thousands of Army infantrymen and cut off most of the roads in and out of Baghdad.

"No bad guys are coming (out)," Marine Capt. Joe Plenzler said. "No bad guys are going in."

U.S. military officials said their troops would strike into the heart of Baghdad with daily armored raids until the city was cordoned off into a series of safe areas controlled by American and British forces.

Residents of the city could hear the war approaching from nearly every direction. Explosions from bombs, missiles and artillery, as well as the sharp chatter of machine guns, echoed through a thick haze. At the Baghdad airport, a U.S. C-130 aircraft landed, the vanguard of what military officials expected to be additional planes carrying troops and equipment.

U.S. forces killed at least 100 Iraqi soldiers in an overnight battle at the airport that began just hours after the C-130 transport landed, according to field reports.

The battle between members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division and uniformed Iraqi soldiers started just before sundown with probing attacks from the Iraqis at the perimeter of the 13-square-mile airport. The fighting lasted until about 1 a.m. today. No U.S. casualties were reported.

The latest developments gave the impression of a regime entering its death throes, tipping on the verge of collapse. Intelligence reports said a number of high-level officials from Saddam's Baath Party were trying to flee Baghdad. The reports said Saddam's ability to control the city was slipping and predicted that the fall of his government was imminent.

"Regime collapse is a matter of days, not weeks (away)," one report concluded.

An Iraqi state television announcer read a statement in Saddam's name that itself indicated disarray in Iraq's military.

"From President Saddam Hussein, in the name of God the merciful, to all members of the armed forces, peace be upon you," the statement said. "If it is not possible for any fighter to join his unit for whatever reason, let him join a unit of the same kind that he is able to join."

A man who many at the U.S. Defense Department would like to see replace Saddam as Iraq's leader, Ahmed Chalabi, was flown from exile into the southern city of Nasiriyah yesterday on an American C-130 transport plane.

Chalabi was said to be accompanied by 500 troops designated the 1st Battalion Free Iraqi Forces. A statement issued by Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress said his soldiers would be deployed near Nasiriyah and come under the U.S. Central Command, based at Doha, Qatar.

In Washington, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told ABC's "This Week" that Chalabi's troops were "Iraqi citizens ... who will become basically the core of the new Iraqi army once Iraq is free."

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations at Central Command, outlined these allied plans for Baghdad: "Military commanders will slowly but surely take on various parts of the city. They will clean them out."

Sometimes, Brooks told reporters at Central Command, snapping his fingers, "it will be just like that, and we're into Baghdad. Sometimes we'll stay, sometimes we won't. Sometimes it will be like what you see in Basra or Najaf or Nasiriyah, where we want to attack a specific regime location where a meeting is ongoing and kill everyone that's in the meeting ... That could happen in Baghdad."

As in the past, Pace said, U.S. forces were contacting Iraqi officers and seeking their surrender. But now, he said, in some cases they were offering letters signed by Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of allied forces in Iraq, saying the Iraqis could save themselves and their troops.

He said no senior commander has taken Franks up on his offer yet.

Meanwhile, southeast of Nasiriyah, several thousand British troops entered Basra, the second-largest city in the country. They were met with an uneasy relief among some residents, who said they were glad that resistance from Iraqi military and paramilitary fighters appeared to be crumbling.

Ansar al Islam guerrillas in northern Iraq, described by the United States as tied to al-Qaida, were surrendering to Kurdish fighters allied with U.S. forces.

More than 300 Ansar fighters agreed to turn themselves over to the Kurds, according to Kurdish officials. Two, described as a bomb-maker and an assassin, were being held just across the border in Iran.

Around Baghdad, elements of the 3rd Infantry Division, including Company C of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, were in action yesterday. As the unit moved north toward Baghdad, it destroyed 12 Iraqi tanks within a distance of about four miles.

Farther east, nearly the entire 1st Marine Division was massing at a string of encampments across the Tigris River from Baghdad.

"It's like all of Camp Pendleton has moved here," one Marine said.

Despite his government's losses, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said Sahaf insisted at a news conference in Baghdad that Saddam's government would triumph.

"Republican Guards are still tightening the noose around the U.S. enemy in the area surrounding the airport," Sahaf said. "We destroyed six tanks and damaged 10 others and killed 50 of the enemy forces. After crushing the American and British aggression and invasion, there will only be Iraq, headed by Saddam Hussein, with all its traditions and all its institutions."