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View Full Version : Marines take military airfield



wrbones
04-08-03, 07:16 AM
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2527034


U.S. Says It Takes Military Airfield Near Baghdad
Tue April 8, 2003 07:19 AM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Marines said they had captured a military airfield on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad on Tuesday after it apparently had been abandoned by retreating Iraqi forces.
Marines met no resistance as they rolled tracked armored vehicles up the runway at the Rashid airfield some three miles from the center of the capital, while infantry kicked down doors of office buildings to search for any Iraqi forces.

"We are just securing it, making sure there are no enemy forces left in it that might be straggling behind," U.S. Captain Matt Watt of 1st Marines Division's Lima Company, told Reuters at the airfield.

At a briefing at Central Command headquarters in Qatar, U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks confirmed that the airfield was in U.S. hands.