Allied forces inching closer to Iraqi capital

Associated Press

U.S.-led forces closed in on Baghdad yesterday, meeting tenacious resistance from paramilitary fighters and Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard along the way. With attacks by irregular combatants in civilian clothes on the rise, wary troops were watching all Iraqis with increasing suspicion.

Iraqis flee the city of Basra in southern Iraq, across a bridge manned by British troops. In the city yesterday, British commandos killed a Republican Guard colonel whom they suspect was sent to Basra to invigorate pro-Saddam forces there. Associated Press

Iraqi soldiers fired from behind brick walls and hedges with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, and U.S. troops returned fire with 25mm cannon and machine guns.

At least 15 Iraqis were killed and U.S. forces captured several dozen others who identified themselves as members of the Republican Guard — Saddam's best-trained and equipped fighters. Their uniforms carried the elite unit's triangular insignia and they said they were with the Nebuchadnezzar Brigade, based in Saddam's home area of Tikrit.

In Baghdad, the headquarters of Iraq's information ministry was set ablaze after a predawn missile strike early today. Coalition attacks targeting leadership and command and control centers were carried out simultaneously by multiple B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers, according to U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war in Iraq.

With nightly aerial bombardments on the capital and ground forces advancing from the south, west and north, U.S. military leaders defended the pace of the war effort yesterday, answering criticism that they had underestimated the vigor of Iraqi resistance.

"We have the power to be patient in this, and we're not going to do anything before we're ready," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

There is good reason for caution as troops face persistent danger from plainclothes killers and warnings from Iraqi officials that there will be more suicide attacks like the one that killed four Americans on Saturday. Iraqis said some 4,000 Arabs have come to Iraq to help attack the invaders.

While it was not clear when the ground assault on Baghdad would begin, officials predicted Saddam's defenders would put up a brutal fight.

"It's going to get more difficult as we move closer to Baghdad," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. "I would suspect that the most dangerous and difficult days are still ahead of us."

As part of the effort to clear the road for ground forces, Myers said airstrikes on Baghdad and its environs have reduced some Republican Guard units to less than half their prewar capacity.

Airstrikes on Baghdad employing three generations of long-range bombers targeted Iraqi leaders, command and control centers and communications facilities, Pentagon officials said. Tomahawk cruise missiles hit the Iraqi Information Ministry in downtown Baghdad and blew out its windows.

The Army's 82nd Airborne Division killed about 100 "regime terror squad members" and captured about 50 prisoners at the Shiite holy city of Najaf and another town in south-central Iraq, according to U.S. Central Command. It did not further identify the "terror squads."

In Nasiriyah, where fighting has been fierce for a week, Marines secured buildings held by an Iraqi infantry division that contained large caches of weapons and chemical decontamination equipment.

In northern Iraq, coalition forces today pounded front-line Iraq positions in Kalak, a town 18 miles east of Mosul, the largest city in the north. The bombing came a day after Kurdish fighters took control of more territory from withdrawing Iraqi forces in the north, and moved to 15 miles of the major Iraqi oil center of Kirkuk.

A Scimitar tank of the Queens Dragoons Guard, right, moves along as a striker vehicle, also of the QDG, launches a sidewinder missile at an Iraqi bunker in southern Iraq yesterday. Associated Press

British troops moved into villages on the fringes of Basra, the southern city where an outnumbered but tough core of Saddam loyalists have held off the coalition for about a week. Up to 1,000 Royal Marines and supporting troops, backed by heavy artillery and tanks, staged a commando assault in a Basra suburb, killing about 30 Iraqi fighters and destroying a bunker and several tanks.

Rumsfeld offered a frank assessment of why many Iraqis have been slow to embrace allied soldiers even in some areas of the country unfriendly to Saddam.

He noted that the Shiite population in and around Basra rose up against Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War. "The United States and the coalition forces left, and they were slaughtered" by the tens of thousands, Rumsfeld said.

For that reason, "I'm inclined not to urge people to rise up until we're close and we can be helpful."

British Maj. Gen. Albert Whitley, commander of coalition efforts to secure areas for humanitarian shipments, said: "We did not really appreciate what 12-plus years of fear can do to people."

After the suicide attack at Najaf and continuing trouble from combatants out of uniform, every apparently innocuous Iraqi man in the path of the allies is getting a hard second look. Nervous U.S. troops warned approaching drivers yesterday they will be shot if they do not leave the area.

Still, with handshakes, candy for children and chitchat in broken Arabic or through an interpreter, U.S. soldiers were making acquaintances.

In a 10-mile advance toward Baghdad, bringing them within 50 miles of the capital, soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division encountered a dozen farmers waving white flags attached to sacks of flour.

Capt. Chris Carter, the commanding officer, pulled back his convoy of hundreds of armored vehicles to avoid damage to the farmers' run-down shanties.

The U.S. Central Command said the latest targets hit by coalition aircraft included military facilities at the Abu Garayb Presidential Palace, the Karada military intelligence complex and the barracks of a major paramilitary training center, all in different sectors of Baghdad.

In Kuwait, a man in civilian clothes ran a white pickup truck into a group of U.S. soldiers standing by a store at their base, Camp Udairi, injuring 15 people, one of whom was hospitalized.

The military transferred 10 Marines and a Navy corpsman with combat wounds to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where most were reunited with family members.