- NEAR BAGHDAD (Reuters) -
U.S. forces launched an assault on Baghdad airport on Thursday after armored
units thrust almost unopposed to within six miles of the edge of the Iraqi
capital, military sources said.
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- Planes blasted targets in and around the city.
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- Parts of four elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions
were moving south, U.S. officers said, setting up a potential showdown
for the capital -- the key prize in the two-week-old U.S. and British war
to topple President Saddam Hussein.
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- "A vise is closing and the days of a brutal regime
are coming to an end," President Bush told 20,000 people, including
12,000 camouflage-clad Marines, on a parade ground at Camp Lejeune in North
Carolina.
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- But U.S. and British political and military leaders said
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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- "Coalition forces at this point are outside of the
Baghdad airport and are positioning themselves to engage that fight at
a time of our choice," Captain Frank Thorp said at the Central Command
advance war headquarters in Qatar.
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- Questions remained over the fate of the two other Republican
Guard divisions defending Baghdad. U.S. officers said they had in effect
been wiped out but defense analysts said they may have regrouped or withdrawn
to prepare for the battle for Baghdad.
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- "This latest advance does raise questions, chiefly:
What has happened to the Republican Guard? Have they been wiped out, or
have they withdrawn from circulation to regroup in Baghdad," French
military consultant Colonel Jean-Louis Dufour said.
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- Reuters correspondents with U.S. troops quoted military
sources as saying forward units of the 3rd Infantry Division were six miles
from the southern outskirts of the capital, which Saddam has vowed to defend
street by street.
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- U.S. officers said they had met little resistance. "We're
pushing on really fast," Captain Kevin Jackson of the Engineer Brigade
of the 3rd Division told Reuters. "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 56 miles northwest of Baghdad and
blocked the road to his hometown of Tikrit.
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- POWER GOES OFF IN BAGHDAD
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- U.S. planes kept up their heavy bombardment of Baghdad's
center and outskirts. Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul heard powerful
explosions repeatedly from the direction of Saddam International Airport,
12 miles southwest of the center.
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- Power went off in most of the capital on Thursday evening
for the first time since the war began. At the same time, sustained barrages
of artillery and anti-aircraft fire echoed from the southwestern outskirts
toward the airport.
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- A Reuters correspondent outside Baghdad said the 3rd
Infantry Division had fired 20 rockets toward Baghdad.
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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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- "Their allegations are a cover-up for their failure.
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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- The latest advances followed an abrupt punch forward
on Wednesday, when U.S. forces surged past the towns of Kerbala and Kut
and captured key bridges over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, preparing
the way for an assault on Saddam's stronghold.
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- Although U.S. officials said on Wednesday front-line
troops had crossed a "red line" into areas where Iraqi forces
might be most likely to use poison gas, Reuters correspondent Luke Baker
saw signs the threat was now perceived to be easing.
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- Baker said U.S. soldiers had been told they could remove
protective boots from chemical warfare suits they were wearing. U.S. and
British leaders have cited Iraq's alleged possession of chemical and biological
weapons as the reason for the war.
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- Saddam denies having such weapons.
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