Forces Resume Baghdad Advance As Army Takes On Key [Archive] - Marine Corps

thedrifter

04-02-03, 09:51 AM

Basra Standoff

While the battlefield heated up near Baghdad, British forces remained in a tense standoff with Iraqi troops in far southeastern Iraq around Basra, the country's second-largest city. British and U.S. forces received a request -- the first known proposal of its kind -- for a 50-minute cease-fire there to allow Iraqi troops to recover their dead. Leery of Iraqi deceptions during the past two weeks and unsure exactly who was sending the message, U.S. military commanders rejected the request.

U.S. warplanes again bombed Hussein's presidential yacht, the Mansur, near Basra in the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads into the Persian Gulf. Although U.S. planes had bombed the yacht a week ago, it did not sink. Navy officials could not confirm if the yacht sank as a result of Tuesday's airstrike.

Flares lit the night sky over Basra, although it was not immediately clear why the devices were being used. Iraqi soldiers and militiamen armed with mortars and heavy artillery still effectively control the city. Thousands of British troops have massed to the south and west, but they have been reluctant to engage in urban combat with the Iraqi forces, hoping instead that residents will rise up against government loyalists who run Basra, which has 1.3 million inhabitants.

At the same time, Army and Marine units pursued combat operations along the Euphrates River in central and southern Iraq, hunting down Iraqi soldiers and militiamen who have been attacking supply lines and ambushing rear elements of the invasion force.

In Diwaniyah, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, Marines reported killing at least 75 Iraqi soldiers and taking at least three dozen prisoners after troops on a reconnaissance mission found several fortified Iraqi positions. Intense fighting also continued in Najaf, about 90 miles south of the capital, where elements of the Army's 101st Airborne Division pressed to within a half-mile of a venerated Shiite Muslim shrine to root out several hundred militiamen believed to be hiding in the city.

Air Force planes dropped three 2,000-pound bombs on three buildings near the shrine, thought by U.S. commanders to be a resistance stronghold. But the shrine, the golden-domed Tomb of Ali, where the prophet Muhammad's son-in-law revered by Shiite Muslims is said to be buried, was reported to be unharmed.

Marines kept up pressure on regular army units to the southeast, pelting Iraq's 10th Armored Division with repeated airstrikes to keep it pinned down around the city of Amarah and prevent it from moving to help the Baghdad Division at Kut. At the same time, the 1st Marine Division, backed up by the Marines' Task Force Tarawa, moved to cut off highways that would allow in reinforcements.

Marines also swept through parts of Nasiriyah, a city along the Euphrates River about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, to flush out militiamen who have disrupted U.S. supply lines for more than a week.

Iraq's information minister, meanwhile, read a message on state television that he said was from Hussein, calling for a jihad, or holy war, against invading U.S. and British troops.

"The aggression that the aggressors are carrying out against the stronghold of faith is an aggression on the religion, the wealth, the honor and the soul and an aggression on the land of Islam," Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf said. "Therefore, jihad is a duty in confronting them and those who are martyred will be rewarded in heaven. Seize the opportunity, my brothers."

Earlier in the day, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, told ABC News that Hussein should step down to end the war. "Since he's asking all Iraqis to sacrifice their lives for their country, then the least that can be expected is that he would do the same and sacrifice for his country," the prince said.

The Iraqi vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, responded angrily at a news conference, telling Saud to "go to hell" and calling him a "failure," a "loser" and "a minion and a lackey."

If the Marines are able to defeat the Baghdad Division, that would free them to turn west and sprint toward Baghdad, whose eastern front is defended by the Republican Guard's Al Nida Division. Al Nida is considered a stronger force than the Baghdad Division and has not been targeted by U.S. bombing as heavily as other divisions yet, although parts of the unit have been cannibalized to reinforce other positions around Baghdad, U.S. officials said.

Baker reported from Marine Combat Headquarters in the southern Iraqi desert. Correspondent Alan Sipress at the U.S. Central Command's field headquarters in Doha, Qatar, and staff writers William Branigin with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division and Jonathan Weisman in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Sempers,

Roger