American forces storm halfway to Baghdad

By Calvin Woodward
Associated Press

Advancing in a dusty dash toward Iraq's hard-core defenders, U.S. forces rolled to within 150 miles of Baghdad and British troops tightened their grip on the southern city of Basra.

A soldier from the U.S. Army's Company A, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, watches the blur of a convoy of 3rd Infantry Division forces as it passes by, pushing deeper into Iraq. The division is headed for the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, where it expects to face resistance from Republican Guard units. Associated Press

In London, military officials said a Royal Air Force aircraft was missing today after failing to return from a mission. No details about the mission or the place were disclosed.

On the outskirts of Basra, a city of 1.3 million where Saddam Hussein's tough security fighters were thought to be lodged, allies captured the airport in a gunbattle and took a bridge.

U.S. forces crossed the Euphrates River and were halfway to Baghdad, two days after spilling from Kuwait in a sprint that has secured strategic oil fields, a seaport and towns.

In one of the most dramatic advances, the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade covered 228 miles in less than 40 hours to take fighting positions near the halfway mark to Baghdad. Driving night and day, more than 70 tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles raced across the desert in a flanking movement that placed the 2nd Brigade ahead of all U.S. forces on the march to Baghdad.

At one point, the brigade engaged dozens of civilian vehicles mounted with machine guns, destroying 15 vehicles, killing at least 100 Iraqi militiamen and capturing 20 prisoners.

Near Basra, Cobra attack helicopters, attack jets, tanks and 155 mm howitzers fought ahead of the troops to clear Highway 80. The road was nicknamed Highway of Death during the 1991 Gulf War because of an American air assault so devastating and graphic it even gave U.S. officials pause.

Officials said 1,000 to 2,000 Iraqi soldiers were in allied custody and many others gave up the fight. But six divisions of the Republican Guard, Saddam's best and most loyal soldiers, were still in the way.

There was danger away from the front lines, as well. In northern Kuwait at Camp Pennsylvania, a U.S. soldier died when grenades were thrown into three tents, including a command tent for the 101st Airborne Division. Thirteen other soldiers were injured, three seriously.

A U.S. soldier found hiding in a bunker was detained, and an Army spokesman said the motivation for the attack was probably "resentment."

The fate of Saddam remained unknown to the U.S. and British officials trying to kill him.

"Actually, I don't know if he's alive or not," said U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, the war commander.

Saddam was shown on Iraqi TV again yesterday, but there was no telling when the tape was made.

U.S. officials had no new, credible intelligence showing whether he had survived assaults on his compounds, or whether he might have been wounded.

London's Daily Telegraph reported today that British intelligence had information that Saddam was badly injured in Thursday's U.S. attack and that he needed a blood transfusion.

The paper also reported that Saddam's son Odai was either badly injured or killed. The paper quoted an unnamed British official in its report.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said another senior Iraqi leader was known to be alive and might be running some of Iraq's defenses: Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti, known to his enemies as "Chemical Ali" for his role in a chemical-weapons attack on Kurds in 1988.

Any thought the allies would limit air attacks to the cover of darkness vanished in the smoky sunlight yesterday.

Twenty huge columns of smoke rose along Baghdad's southern horizon yesterday afternoon. Intermittent explosions were heard through the capital.

But when darkness did fall, the intensity picked up. Strong blasts rocked the capital. Warplanes were heard overhead once again. The attacks eased as the night wore on, but a new round of explosions rattled the city early today.

Six Britons and a U.S. Navy officer died yesterday when two Royal Navy helicopters collided over the Persian Gulf. On Friday, two U.S. Marines were killed in combat and a helicopter crash left eight British and four U.S. Marines dead.

After weeks of recalcitrance by Turkish leaders, U.S. military officials gave up on using Turkish bases to move heavy armored forces into northern Iraq, and redirected ships loaded with the weaponry to the Persian Gulf.

The 4th Infantry Division's soldiers, about 17,000, have remained out of action pending resolution of the matter. They will probably enter the conflict from Kuwait; how many is not known.

In Baghdad, an earlier round of bombing, seemingly apocalyptic in scale, terrifying in its effect, laid waste to presidential palaces, government offices and military headquarters.

But only three people died in that bombardment, Iraqi officials said yesterday. They said more than 200 were injured.

Iraqi officials showed reporters the residential al-Qadassiya neighborhood, where seven houses were destroyed and 12 damaged, as well as a tourist complex along the Tigris river and an empty orphanage that were hit.

West of Baghdad, another of Saddam's palaces was destroyed Saturday in a strike by warplanes from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, according to a commander aboard the carrier.

Iraqi state television reported that air strikes also hit Tikrit, Saddam's hometown and a stronghold of support. The report said five civilians were killed and four wounded.

And in the far north, U.S. forces fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at suspected positions of Ansar al Islam guerrillas, accused of having ties to al-Qaida terrorists.

Saddam's security forces in Basra opened up with artillery and heavy machine guns. Facing the prospect of urban warfare, allied commanders hoped to win the surrender of their enemy rather than have to overpower the city.

The British took charge of the Basra fighting yesterday as U.S. Marines pressed north

Even a smaller conquest, the Umm Qasr seaport, was not entirely safe after two days; some Iraqi combatants slipped into civilian garb and became guerrillas.

The U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division surged 100 miles through the desert, heading straight for Baghdad and the well-trained Republican Guard troops defending the capital.

The Army's V Corps took Nasiriyah, a crossing point over the Euphrates northwest of Basra.

President Bush convened a wartime national security meeting at the Camp David, Md., retreat, where he was spending his first weekend since unleashing the U.S. military on Iraq on Wednesday.

In his weekly radio address, he said "our mission is clear — to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism and to free the Iraqi people."