- NEAR BAGHDAD (Reuters) -
U.S. forces attacked Iraqis dug in at Baghdad's main airport on Thursday
after armored units thrust to the edge of the city, where they intend to
oust and possibly kill President Saddam Hussein.
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- As ground forces advanced, planes blasted targets in
and around the city, where the power went off for the first time since
the U.S.-led war started two weeks ago. U.S. officials said their forces
had not targeted the electricity grid.
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- "They've taken several outlying areas and are closer
to the center of the Iraqi capital than many American commuters are from
their downtown offices," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a
Pentagon briefing.
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- He said Saddam's fate was sealed. "For the senior
leadership, there is no way out. Their fate has been sealed by their actions,"
he said.
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- A Reuters reporter said dozens of Iraqis, including some
civilians, were killed and scores injured in the village of Furat near
Baghdad airport on Thursday evening after a barrage of U.S. artillery and
rocket attacks.
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- In a sign that Saddam's authority throughout Iraq may
be crumbling, a senior Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
ordered believers in a "fatwa" (edict) not to oppose invasion
troops, according to a Shi'ite group based in London which represents his
followers worldwide.
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- Sistani, who is known and respected throughout the Muslim
world, had been held under house arrest by Saddam and previously, possibly
under duress, had issued a statement urging Iraqis to resist the invasion.
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- Iraqi satellite television showed footage on Thursday
evening of Saddam chairing a meeting. As usual, there was no way to verify
when the footage was shot.
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- Near Baghdad, Reuters correspondent Luke Baker, with
the engineer units of the 3rd Infantry Division, said military sources
told him U.S. forces had discovered some sort of tunnel system under the
airport and one tunnel led all the way back to the Tigris river.
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- Baghdad's Saddam International Airport is about 12 miles
southwest of the center of the city of five million.
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- In the nearby village of Furat, Iraqi officials put the
total death toll in and around the village at 83, but this could not be
independently confirmed.
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- HIGH CASUALTIES
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- Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki said there were more
than 120 people wounded in the attack on the village, which lies between
the airport and the Iraqi capital.
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- "We saw a pile of dead bodies at one of the four
hospitals where the victims were taken. Most of them appeared to be military,"
he said. "But there were civilian casualties too."
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- U.S. officers had earlier said parts of four elite Iraqi
Republican Guard divisions were moving south, setting up a potential showdown
for the capital.
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- But Rumsfeld said the Iraqis had been forced to reinforce
their crack divisions with regular army units which were less well-trained
and less reliable.
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- He said after days of pulverizing air attacks and artillery
barrages, the Republican Guards had lost much of their equipment and taken
heavy casualties.
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- "A vise is closing and the days of a brutal regime
are coming to an end," President Bush told 12,000 camouflage-clad
Marines, on a parade ground at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
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- U.S. and British political and military leaders fear
urban warfare in Baghdad could be prolonged and bloody and they refused
to be drawn on when they might authorize a final push to capture the city
of five million people.
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- Rumsfeld said Iraq had run exercises in Baghdad before
the war started and had organized block captains and dug trenches in anticipation
of street fighting.
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- "The regime has been weakened to be sure, but it
is still lethal, and it may prove to be more lethal in the final moments
before it ends," he said.
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- LITTLE RESISTANCE
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- U.S. officers said they had met little resistance in
their advance. "We're pushing on really fast," said Captain Kevin
Jackson of the Engineer Brigade of the 3rd Division. "There doesn't
seem to have been much opposition so far."
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- At Central Command, a U.S. commander said special forces
had also raided a residence of Saddam northwest of Baghdad and blocked
the road to his hometown of Tikrit.
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- Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf accused
U.S. forces of killing 14 people with cluster bombs and said U.S. claims
to be near Baghdad were "silly."
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- "They've not been able to control any Iraqi city.
We're waging a war of attrition against this snake and we will be victorious,"
he told a Baghdad news conference.
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- But the accumulated dispatches from the hundreds of reporters
accompanying U.S. units lent an air of unreality to such statements.
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- U.S. forces did not escape completely unscathed. A Black
Hawk helicopter crashed near the city of Kerbala and a U.S. F/A-18 Hornet
fighter-bomber also went down. But U.S. officials were not certain either
incident was caused by hostile fire.
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- The U.S. officials were also investigating a "possible
friendly fire incident" involving an F-15E Strike Eagle plane and
ground forces in which one U.S. soldier was killed and several were reported
injured or missing.
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- In northern Iraq, Kurdish fighters, backed by small groups
of U.S. soldiers, advanced toward the northern oil town of Mosul but were
met by heavy machinegun and rifle fire, Reuters correspondent Sebastian
Alison said.
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- Further south, U.S. troops moved into the center of the
Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf, searching for paramilitary fighters,
and tightened their grip on Nassiriya, where they appeared to be in full
control of bridges over the Euphrates.
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- In the far south, British forces surrounding Iraq's second
city of Basra edged into the outskirts, capturing an industrial complex
where Iraqi militia had spearheaded fierce resistance.
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- The United States lists 54 dead and 12 missing since
the war began. Britain says it has suffered 27 dead.
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- Iraq has not given figures for military deaths, but Foreign
Minister Naji Sabri said more than 1,250 civilians have been killed, a
figure that could not be independently checked.
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