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thedrifter
03-22-03, 06:59 AM
Sat, Mar 22, 2003

By Adrian Croft

UMM QASR, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. Marines faced pockets of Iraqi resistance in the strategic Iraqi port of Umm Qasr on Saturday, a day after Washington said it had won control.


The Marines also said that U.S. and British forces had taken between 400 and 450 Iraqi prisoners in fighting around Umm Qasr, Iraq (news - web sites)'s only deep-water port, and the nearby Faw peninsula which controls access from the Gulf to Iraq's tiny coast.


"We did meet some resistance, it's probably not going as quick as we would have liked," Colonel Thomas Waldhauser, Commanding Officer of the 15th Marine expeditionary unit, told reporters in Umm Qasr.


"There is still some slight resistance within the town," he said, more than a day after starting an assault on the port.


He said the Marines hoped to secure Umm Qasr later on Saturday. One U.S. Marine died in the fighting for the port. Waldhauser said he had no idea of Iraqi casualties.


Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington on Friday that U.S. and British forces had captured Umm Qasr. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf on Saturday dismissed Rumsfeld's statement as "illusions and lies."


Reuters reporter Adrian Croft, in Umm Qasr, said that he heard a burst of machinegun fire on Saturday and the sound of artillery apparently fired at the town.


U.S. Marines also set up a mortar but did not fire. Waldhauser said defenders had had small arms, rifles, mortars, rocket propelled grenades and some artillery.


LAST-MINUTE REINFORCEMENTS


Waldhauser said that some of the defenders were dressed in civilian clothes and that some had been brought in at the last minute to resist the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) that started on Thursday.


"At times military units start to change into civilian clothes. They move and claim they are not in the military," he said. He also said they were also hiding among civilians.


Croft also saw British forces delivering about 50 prisoners of war to a small beach at Umm Qasr in 10 rubber dinghies. Wearing plastic handcuffs, they were transferred to a warehouse with other prisoners.


"Two had to be brought in on stretchers," Croft said. "Two others were limping and needed help. Some of them had no shoes."


Waldhauser said the Marines would start trying to check piers and cranes in the port for booby traps. U.S.-led forces want to use the port for humanitarian.


"Our ambition is to open the port and get humanitarian aid into the people of southern Iraq as quickly as possible," Group Captain Al Lockwood, main spokesman for British forces at command headquarters in Qatar, told Reuters.


British Brigadier Jim Dutton, commander of Third Commando Brigade of the British Royal Marines, reiterated that his forces had captured the southern end of the Faw peninsula.


"At the moment we are secure at the bottom end (of the peninsula)...The plan is eventually to move forward to the southern edge of (the nearby port city of) Basra. We started doing that now, cleaning up the peninsula," he said.



Sempers,

Roger