- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S.
forces tightened their hold on central Baghdad on Tuesday, advancing street
by street and blitzing targets with planes and tanks as Iraqi defenders
fought an unequal battle with anti-tank weapons and assault rifles.
-
- Consolidating the U.S. stranglehold on the city of five
million people, Marines captured the Rashid airbase in the southeast, three
miles from the center.
-
- The U.S. military said it did not know whether an air
strike on a building in a wealthy district of Baghdad on Monday evening
had killed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but added his grasp on the nation
of 26 million was fast disintegrating.
-
- "We're not sure exactly who's in charge at this
particular point in time," U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks declared.
-
- Aircraft, tanks and artillery pounded the nerve center
of Saddam's administration in a thundering raid in central Baghdad that
began at dawn, meeting only scattered Iraqi resistance in what appeared
to be the final battle for Saddam's capital.
-
- "It's raining bombs," said Reuters correspondent
Samia Nakhoul. "They're targeting the same area over and over. The
place is shaking and there's smoke rising," she said from the Palestine
Hotel, where most foreign media are based.
-
- Later a U.S. tank fired into the hotel, killing Reuters
cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 television.
Nakhoul and two other Reuters journalists were wounded.
-
- A U.S. general said the tank had fired a single round
to silence small arms and grenade fire from the hotel. Journalists said
they had heard no such firing in the vicinity of the hotel.
-
- Al-Jazeera reporter-producer Tarek Ayoub, a Jordanian,
was killed during a U.S. air raid, the Arab satellite television said.
Another crew member, Zohair al-Iraqi, was hurt when Jazeera's office near
the Information Ministry was hit.
-
- "EXPANDING PRESENCE"
-
- Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire said U.S. Marines
moved street by street through east Baghdad, meeting small-arms fire from
Iraqi irregulars but a welcome from some residents. "Thank you, Mr.
Bush," cried one woman dressed in black.
-
- U.S. officers said the Marines were trying to link up
with forces from the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, currently in north Baghdad
to the west of the Tigris river.
-
- "A vise is closing in on this regime, and as the
vise closes their time is running out," said U.S. Lt. Mark Kitchens.
-
- U.S. special forces in the north of Iraq were preventing
Iraqi troops moving south toward Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace or Baghdad,
Brooks said at U.S. Central Command in Qatar.
-
- Two Abrams tanks rolled onto the capital's Jumhuriya
bridge over the Tigris in a show of muscle to cow forces -- Republican
Guards and paramilitary Fedayeen -- still loyal to Saddam.
-
- But Iraq's ever-defiant information minister said Iraqi
forces would "tackle and destroy" the invaders.
-
- "They are going to surrender or be burned in their
tanks," Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told reporters at the Palestine Hotel.
-
- Ambulances raced through the streets, ferrying casualties
to already overwhelmed hospitals. Aid agencies said the hospitals were
running low on life-saving medicines as civilian casualties mounted.
-
- POSTWAR IRAQ
-
- As the 20-day-old war to topple Saddam neared its climax,
President Bush met his British ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair, to discuss
the future of Iraq.
-
- "We will move as quickly as possible to place governmental
responsibilities under the control of an interim authority composed of
Iraqis from both inside and outside the country," Bush said after
the summit in Northern Ireland.
-
- "The interim authority will serve until a permanent
government can be chosen by the Iraqi people."
-
- Blair said Bush had agreed there would be a "vital
role" for the United Nations in Iraqi reconstruction. Bush and Blair
hope their vision for after the war will appease widespread international
suspicion of U.S. motives in Iraq.
-
- In Moscow, the Kremlin announced that Russian President
Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder -- key opponents of the war -- would meet in St Petersburg at
the weekend.
-
- In Baghdad, talk of reconstruction seemed remote.
-
- Smoke and flames poured from government ministries and
official buildings pounded by U.S. planes, tanks and artillery.
-
- An Iraqi missile shot down an A-10 Warthog ground attack
plane in action near Baghdad international airport, Brooks said. The airport
is held by the Americans. The pilot was rescued.
-
- Iraqi state television went off the air. It did not broadcast
its regular news bulletin, showing only old footage of Saddam. Baghdad
radio also went silent for a while.
-
- The U.S. military indicated that it had targeted the
transmitters. "Clearly we would like to destroy Saddam's capability
to disseminate lies," said Major Mike Birmingham of the 3rd Infantry
Division.
-
- NO WORD ON SADDAM There was no word on the fate of Saddam
after Monday's air strike on a residential area of western Baghdad.
-
- "We believe the attack was effective in causing
destruction of the facility," Brooks said. "As to who was inside
and what their conditions are, it will take time to determine."
-
- Witnesses said two houses were flattened and four buildings
badly damaged by 2,000-pound bombs in the raid on the Mansur district.
Nine Iraqis were killed and four wounded.
-
- A spokesman in Kuwait said a U.S.-led civil administration
would start work in Iraq on Tuesday when a team of about 20 officials deploys
in the southern port of Umm Qasr.
-
- The mission of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian
Assistance (ORHA) is to provide humanitarian assistance, work on reconstructing
Iraq and pave the way for the creation of an interim Iraqi government.
-
- ORHA is headed by retired U.S. General Jay Garner, who
will report to U.S. war commander General Tommy Franks.
-
- A British military spokesman said a tribal leader would
help form a new leadership in Iraq's southern province after British forces
seized Basra, Iraq's second city, on Monday. Residents demanded the British
stamp out rampant looting.
-
- In the north, U.S. planes pounded Iraqi positions in
and around the oil hub of Kirkuk overnight in one of the heaviest attacks
yet in the area, a Kurdish commander said.
-
- On world markets, investors began looking past the Iraq
war to worries about the U.S. economy, depressing stocks and the dollar.
Gold, bond and oil prices rose slightly.
|
