Prisoner claims
Franks said US and British forces had already taken between 1,000 and 2,000 Iraqi prisoners of war since the start of the campaign, and that thousands of other Iraqi fighters had "laid down their arms and gone home."
Iraq's vice president responded yesterday by saying Iraqi state television would soon show pictures of US prisoners captured south of Nasiriyah.
Amid the US-led air assault and simultaneous ground push to Baghdad, Iraqi state television broadcast new images yesterday of a confident Saddam meeting with top political and military officials.
Iraqi officials have rejected any suggestion that Saddam's rule has been challenged. He has reportedly chaired three meetings with key advisers since the start of the US-led military offensive against his government.
Franks said Saddam's whereabouts remained a mystery but US forces would know more in the coming days, adding that the US-led campaign aimed to cripple Saddam's entire network of power, not just the Iraqi leader himself.
Coalition forces away from the front lines faced danger as well, with one US soldier killed in a grenade attack apparently carried out by one of his comrades and a British war plane shot down by a US Patriot missile.
The coalition also confirmed that a British Tornado fighter bomber had been shot down by a US-operated Patriot missile near the Kuwaiti border. The plane normally carries two people.
Al-Jazeera television showed a live broadcast of Iraqi troops on boats searching the Tigris river for US or British aircrew believed to have been on board.
The incident was one of a string of accidents to plague the Anglo-American forces, which saw 19 of their soldiers killed in two helicopter crashes in recent days.
In northern Iraq, US forces targeted the key city of Mosul, with Qatar-based satellite channel al-Jazeera reporting intense bombing on the outskirts of the oil city and to the east, in the direction of Kirkuk.
No second front
Washington's plans to open a northern front from Turkey were thwarted Saturday when the country's parliament refused to allow allied troops to cross Turkish soil, but a senior Kurdish rebel leader said his militiamen were poised to join US forces in opening a new front.
Ankara's threats to invade the north continued to complicate coalition planning, as Turkish troops were reported to have entered Kurdish-held territory, defying US insistence that such a deployment would be "unhelpful."
The security situation also deteriorated sharply in the east of Iraqi Kurdistan after massive coalition air raids on two Islamist groups Saturday sparked reprisals that cost the life of an Australian cameraman.
US forces bombed positions held by Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) for a second straight day early yesterday.
Worldwide opposition to Bush's campaign against Baghdad continued for a fourth straight day yesterday, with a massive march of more than 100,000 angry anti-war protesters in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
More than 40,000 demonstrators marched in cities across Australia, with others taking to the streets in Afghanistan, India, Indonesia and Lebanon and at the Cricket World Cup finals in Johannesburg.
The protests came despite new polls showing public sentiment in the US, Britain and Australia - -- the three main countries involved in the war -- swinging in favor of the campaign.
RSS