US Marines were locked in fighting in the key southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr yesterday after a blistering overnight bombardment of Baghdad marked a major escalation in the war to topple Saddam Hussein.
US and British forces moved in on Iraq's second-largest city, taking its airport and a bridge while Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's security forces resisted with artillery and heavy machine guns.
US forces captured the airport on the north side of Basra after encountering resistance from Iraqi troops in armored personnel carriers, said Marine Lieutenant Eric Gentrup.
PHOTO: AFP
"There was a decent amount of resistance," Gentrup said.
Iraq said three people were killed and more than 200 wounded in Friday's onslaught, when planes dropped hundreds of missiles and bombs on the capital and other cities.
Britain said the US army had secured two bridges over the River Euphrates, while a US military spokesman said the key town of Nasiriyah had been captured, opening the way for a thrust towards Baghdad.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Turkish troops were reported to have entered the Kurdish-held north of Iraq, defying US insistence that such a deployment would be "unhelpful," while US missiles targeted an Islamist group in the region that Washington has linked to the al-Qaeda network.
Seven more coalition troops were killed in a collision between two Royal Navy helicopters over the Gulf, as US troops heading for Baghdad took a large swathe of southern Iraq to the west of the Euphrates River.
British Minister of Defence Geoff Hoon said regular units of the Iraqi forces appeared to have pulled out of Basra, adding allied troops were camped outside the city.
He cautioned, however, that elements of Saddam's security services were still in position, "maintaining resistance."
British armed forces chief Admiral Sir Michael Boyce said the Iraqi 51st division had surrendered in the Basra area and there now were "many thousands" of prisoners of war.
A military spokesman at the central command post in Qatar said US and British troops were "trying to negotiate a peaceful surrender" at Basra, while Boyce added that the so-called "Desert Rats" brigade was also in the region.
The Qatar-based satellite channel al-Jazeera reported that some 50 people were killed in a US-led bombardment of the southern port.
But US Marines were still battling Iraqi resistance on the outskirts of the strategic southern port of Umm Qasr, a correspondent reported.
US Cobra helicopters were engaged in combat, firing missiles while both sides were heard launching mortar rounds.
The Iraqis have apparently placed a number of anti-tank mines around the area, according to a correspondent.
In Baghdad, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said the Iraqi military had inflicted "heavy losses" on US and British troops while repelling attacks in southern Iraq.
"Our forces remain in their positions" in Umm Qasr, he said, contradicting earlier reports that Iraq's sole significant deep-sea port had been captured.
A British spokesman said earlier that British forces controlled most of the strategic port: "We believe our objectives have been met," Group Captain Al Lockwood said at the US Central Command post in Qatar.
He said there is "still resistance in some parts, but the majority [of Umm Qasr] is patrolled" by British forces.
Soldiers from the US Army's air assault division "Screaming Eagles" crossed into southern Iraq to play what one commander said would be a "significant role" in the coalition onslaught.
The division is equipped with 270 helicopters, including attack Apaches and multi-purpose Black Hawks.
An Iraqi army spokesman denied the surrender of the 51st division. The division was still "inflicting material damage on enemy tanks and casualties among the mercenaries in their area of operation," he said.
The US Marines said the campaign was advancing: "Everything has gone to plan. We're on schedule for what we want to do," Lieutenant Joshua Lyons said.
US forces have been showering Iraqi troops with hundreds of thousands of leaflets urging them to give up and providing instruction on how to surrender.
The Washington Post reported that US military and intelligence officers were engaged in secret contacts with Iraqi commanders seeking to isolate Saddam.
Iraq countered US and British claims that the bombing of Baghdad involved surgical strikes to take out key military command and control targets, saying that bombing had left 207 civilian wounded, most of them women and children.
The casualties were "hit in their homes", Sahhaf said.
Workers were clearing rubble from the streets of the capital early yesterday. Smoke continued to spiral to the sky from a main building of the Republican Palace compound, symbol of Saddam's iron grip on Iraq since 1979.
For nearly an hour, thunderous explosions rocked the ancient city of 5 million people late Friday, sending fireballs and thick smoke billowing skyward and triggering earth-shaking shock waves.
A US defense source said US and British air forces flew 1,000 strike sorties and fired 1,000 cruise missiles on Iraq Friday, with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying Saddam's regime was "starting to lose control."
Iraq's Sahhaf, quoted by the al-Jazeera Arabic television channel, said a former royal residence turned museum and a guest palace had been destroyed.
With international opposition to the war showing little sign of abating, Russia said it would block any attempt at the UN to seek retroactive approval for the US-led war.
"Without a doubt, there will be attempts to find a way to confer legitimacy on military operations or post-war reorganization in Iraq through the UN Security Council," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said.
"We, of course, will not give this military action legitimacy."
There was widespread speculation about the fate of Saddam, with suggestions in the US and British media that he may have been killed or at least injured in the dawn Thursday missile strikes that opened the war.
US television network ABC quoted officials as saying that a French intermediary was trying to broker a deal under which Saddam would go into exile in the west African state of Mauritania.
The US campaign received a boost when Turkey opened its airspace to US warplanes bound for Iraq after tense haggling in which Ankara sought US approval for its own military intervention in northern Iraq.
"It has been determined that it is in Turkey's interests to open Turkish airspace," Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said.
Turkish forces were also reported to have gone into the Kurdish-held north of Iraq. Hoon said he was aware of the incursion, adding: "The size of that force is consistent with a border policing operation."
However, Turkey refused to confirm the report.
"We have nothing to say and no commentary to make," an army spokesman said.
Up to 50 cruise missiles were fired early yesterday at a hardline Islamist group in the region which Washington has linked to al-Qaeda, a Kurdish military official said, adding that there were "many dead."
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