37 Marines Wounded In
Friendly Fire 'Attack'
3-27-3
| (AFP) -- Dozens of US marines were wounded in a friendly
fire clash near the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah while the US army
beefed up its forces in the north and south, as the war to oust President
Saddam Hussein entered its second week. Shell and mortar fire apparently hit the marine command post headquarters near Nasiriyah, leaving 37 wounded, with three in critical and two in serious condition, officers told an AFP correspondent travelling with the troops. The headquarters compound returned fire, officers said, but casualty reports from the other side were not immediately available. A US Central Command spokesman in Qatar said the incident was under investigation. The clash near Nasiriyah, which destroyed at least six military vehicles, came amid renewed air strikes overnight and early Thursday on Baghdad, mainly on the southern edge of the capital, home to the huge Al-Rasheed military camp. Coalition aircraft rained more bombs on Baghdad overnight as the ground battle intensified after US and British forces encountered tougher than expected resistance from Iraqi troops and were bracing for a battle in the central city of Najaf as they continued their march towards Baghdad. As a sand storm appeared to lift and allied tanks were closing in on the city of five million people, a string of explosions were heard overnight and more blasts reported Thursday morning on the southern rim of the capital, near a large military camp. The fresh bombardment came as Baghdad was still reeling from Wednesday morning's raids, one of which Iraqi officials said left at least 14 people dead in a working-class neighbourhood. The US Central Command acknowledged that coalition fire may have been responsible, but stopped short of confirming the deaths, and accused Baghdad of placing military hardware in civilian areas. Major John Altman, intelligence officer of the Third Infantry Division's First Brigade, told AFP the Iraqis were trying to reinforce Najaf -- 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of the capital -- with thousands of crack Republican Guard troops from Karbala. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff said a column of Iraqi vehicles heading from Baghdad to Karbala was attacked by US forces but did not elaborate on the size of the Iraqi detachment. However other reports put the number of vehicles at up to 1,000. The movement was reported after US army troops said they killed about 1,000 Iraqis in three days of fighting around the town and were poised to move on for a crucial battle in Karbala with the Republican Guard's armoured Medina division guarding the western approaches to Baghdad. In the south, Iraqi tanks made a surprise breakout of the besieged southern city of Basra late Wednesday and pushed on toward British positions under heavy bombardment, a British officer said. Squadron Leader Simon Scott said he could not confirm the number of tanks involved, but reports accredited the column with more than 100 ageing Russian-built T-55s backed by artillery pieces and armoured personnel carriers. "They came out of Basra heading southeast. We're not sure why. They're heading toward British positions on the Fao peninsula," Scott said from the allied command centre in Doha, Qatar. The sheer courage of the Iraqi reinforcements impressed the US troops, who did not expect them to put up such a fight, Major General Buford Blount, commander of the Third Infantry Division told AFP. "They are fighting very tenaciously and constantly attacking US forces." Exactly a week after US President George W. Bush launched the war to topple President Saddam Hussein and as the total number of coalition troops in theater neared 300,000, Iraqi forces still controlled most of the country and showed little sign of wavering. The Washington Post quoted anonymous military officials as saying that the war could drag on for months and that recent developments had "led to a broad reassessment by some top generals of US military expectations and timelines." One of the obstacles to allied progress appeared however to have been momentarily removed as sandstorms which had frozen several of the coalition's planned operations were clearing up. On Wednesday night, as many as 1,000 crack US airborne troops parachuted into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, opening a new front in spite of Turkey's refusal to allow its territory to be used as a staging area for US ground forces. "We are increasing the number of forces in the country every day," said US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "We're increasing them in the north, we're increasing them in the south, we're increasing them in the west." "It's the first sizeable force in northern Iraq," a US defense official said. Meanwhile, the US Army's 4th Infantry Division, which was supposed to have gone into the north through Turkey, has been rerouted to Kuwait to back up the offensive that has put the 3rd Division on Baghdad's doorstep but exposed its supply lines to guerrilla attacks. Bypassed by US forces moving north, the major cities in the south have also become dangerous staging areas for attacks by ruling Baath party loyalists and the Fedayeen Saddam militia, which is headed by Saddam's eldest son Uday. A drumbeat of reports of attacks in the south have created a powerful impression of chaos and danger throughout the region but Major General Stanley McChrystal, deputy director of operations of the Joint Staff insisted "it has not thrown the force off its plan." "As we continue to move forth, the first and primary objective clearly is to overturn the regime," he said. In the battle on the diplomatic front, during a public session of the UN Security Council Wednesday night in New York, most nations condemned the US-led offensive, saying it was not authorized by the council and warning it was likely to cause a humanitarian disaster. "The credibility of the council, the credibility of the whole international system, is collapsing under the bombing of Basra and Baghdad," said the Arab League's representative to the United Nations, Yahya Mahmassani. Demonstrations protesting the war continued around the world, including in Australia where the police threatened to seek a court ban after the latest protests turned violent. A demonstration in Sydney on Wednesday ended with 33 youths arrested and four police injured after they were pelted with chairs, bottles and marbles. In Yemen, the ministry of religious affairs called on the population to observe a one-day hunger strike on Thursday in solidarity with the Iraqis and pray for their victory against the coalition forces. Meanwhile, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair started a two-day summit at the presidential retreat in Camp David with a warm-up discussion over dinner of "geopolitical issues" that the world would face once the war in Iraq was over, a British official said. Coalition defence officials, meanwhile, have said the likelihood of Iraqi troops using chemical weapons would increase as US-led troops close in on Baghdad. However since the war started on March 20, none of the weapons of destructions the United States and Britain accuse Saddam Hussein of possessing have been found. Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presses. |
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