U.S., British troops march toward Basra
By Ravi Nessman
and Ellen Knickmeyer
Associated Press
SOUTHERN IRAQ — U.S. and British forces streamed in a long line of tanks and armored vehicles toward Basra, Iraq's second largest city, today, a day after they collected hungry and overwhelmed Iraqi soldiers who surrendered in droves.
An entire Iraqi division, the 51st Infantry, gave up to U.S. troops yesterday, military officials said. A key unit for Basra's defense with 8,000 men and up to 200 tanks, it was the largest defection in a day when Saddam Hussein's forces showed signs of crumbling.
Earlier today, U.S. Marines and British troops rumbled within nine miles from Basra on the main road from the Kuwaiti border, Highway 80 — nicknamed the "Highway of Death" during the 1991 Gulf War when U.S. air strikes wiped out an Iraqi military convoy along the road.
They rolled past abandoned concrete Iraqi military barracks, white flags fluttering from their roofs, burnt military vehicles beside them. Bedraggled Iraqi civilians watched blankly, some children motioning with their hands to their mouths.
In the wake of the coalition troops were surrendered soldiers. Up to 50 Iraqi captives were left packed into improvised pens of concertina wire, watched over by Marines. Partly disassembled rifles taken from the surrendering soldiers were piled beside the road.
At the Kuwait border, the rest of the allied force was caught in a massive traffic jam — like a great train yard in a desert muddied by overnight rains. Hundreds of tanks, armored personnel carriers, Humvees and trucks waited in columns up to 70 vehicles long to pass into Iraq.
Basra appeared to be the next main objective after U.S. Marines and their allies seized the strategic port city of Umm Qasr and with it, Iraq's access to the Persian Gulf, as well as the key oil facilities on the al-Faw peninsula and many of southern Iraq's oil fields.
At the same time, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division surged 100 miles into Iraq, moving in the desert parallel to the Euphrates River. It avoided the populated river valley and flanked Iraqi units, going straight for the Republican Guard around Baghdad. The Army's 101st Airborne Division also joined the fight.
With the convoy along Highway 80, orange flames could be seen shooting from two major oil pipelines that were on fire. Cobra attack helicopters flew overhead, making their way through the heavy clouds of smoke. Some distance away, a third pipeline was on fire.
There were pockets of resistance, some of it stiff, with Iraqis fighting with small arms, pistols, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. A second combat death was reported yesterday, a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force who was hit while battling a platoon of Iraqi infantry.
Australian commandos, who have been operating deep in Iraq, destroyed a command and control post and killed a number of soldiers, according to the country's defense chief, Gen. Peter Cosgrove.
But often, the opponent advanced with a white flag in hand, instead of a rifle.
The surrendering soldiers were not the fabled and well-fed Republican Guardsmen who anchor Saddam's defense. For the most part, these were a ragtag army, many of them draftees, often in T-shirts. Their small arms could accomplish little against opposing forces wielding 21st century weaponry.
"A lot of them looked hungry. They haven't been fed in a while," said one U.S. military official.
Within a few hours of crossing into southern Iraq, the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit encountered 200 or more Iraqi troops seeking to surrender. One group of 40 Iraqis marched down a two-lane road toward the Americans and gave up.
Another group of Iraq soldiers alongside a road waved a white flag and their raised hands, trying to flag down a group of journalists so they could surrender.
Forty to 50 Iraqi soldiers surrendered to a Marine traffic control unit. They came down the road in the open back of a troop vehicle, their hands in the air for about a mile before they reached the Marines.
Lt. Cmdr. Mark Johnson, a pilot returning to the USS Kitty Hawk from a mission over southern Iraq, said it appeared that Iraqi forces were withdrawing in front of advancing U.S. forces. He could see columns of Marines moving but "there was nobody coming south to meet them."
Time and again, he said, he was told to ignore targets like missile launch sites because U.S. troops had passed without any opposition.
"As it turned out, there was nobody to drop bombs on tonight," Johnson said. "It was simply because we had already taken that land," he said. "There was no need to bomb any more."
The ground campaign appeared to be moving faster than planned. Units reached locations in Iraq 24 hours ahead of their expected arrival time, according to several reporters attached to those units.
