U.S. attacks Baghdad's airport

Baghdad - U.S. troops closed in on Baghdad today, with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division launching at attack on the city's Saddam Hussein International Airport and the sound of distant artillery reverberating in the center of the city.

For the first time since the U.S.-led attack started on March 19, much of the city went dark tonight. All of the downtown and the area along the Tigris River that bisects the capital were without power.

The Associated Press reported that U.S. officers said they had begun attacking the airport, which is 12 miles from the center of the city.

The Army units are pressing a relentless drive toward Baghdad. They reached the vicinity of the airport during the morning, and Marine units push forward in other areas south of the city, U.S. military sources in the Central Command said.

A reporter traveling with one of the division's units said he was within six miles of the city's outer suburbs. Central Command military officials refused to pinpoint the location of American advance.

However, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said, "we certainly are in close proximity of Baghdad."

To the east and further south, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force applied its own pressure on the capital. It was moving northwest along the north bank of the Tigris River to the town of Numaniyah, about 60 miles from the capital. It had traveled 30 miles closer to Baghdad, from Al Kut, over the past day.

Iraqi prisoners were placed aboard trucks and sent south, away from Baghdad, to prisoner of war camps. One day earlier, senior U.S. officers reported that the Baghdad Division of the Republican Guard, defending a southern approach to the capital, had been decimated by artillery and infantry assaults earlier in the week. Today, the Marines found the remaining troops had more fight left in them than expected.

Skirmishes at Al Kut forced the Marines to reroute a convoy on its way toward Baghdad. The troops watched as artillery rounds whistled over their heads toward Republican Guard targets.

"That's going to ruin somebody's day," said one Marine as a shell flew overhead.

A half-dozen helicopters buzzed nearby, firing at multiple targets.

Marine leaders had hoped the Republican Guard would surrender en masse. That hasn't yet happened. But senior officers said the Iraqi's refusal to give up presented another opportunity: A firefight to show remaining divisions they had a choice--to surrender or die.

"Route 7 is a dagger pointed at the heart of the regime," said Brig. Gen. John Kelly, the expeditionary force's assistant commander.

Al Kut, an important city in the Iraqi farm belt, was the site of a battle in 1915 in which the British army suffered defeat.

"It's different this time," Kelly said.

As the Army closed in on the capital from the west, and the Marines approached up the Tigris from the southeast, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said President Bush was leaving to his field commanders the decision on when to make a final push into the city.

"The president respects the chain of command," Fleischer said aboard Air Force One as the president flew to North Carolina to meet with families of five Marines killed in Iraq.

The White House spokesman said Bush was "deeply concerned" that Iraq might fire chemical or biological weapons at the invading U.S. troops in a final effort to block their advance.

At the Central Command's forward headquarters in Qatar, U.S. military officers said battlefield reports indicated a lack of overall coordinated resistance to the U.S. advance. They said U.S. forces were facing largely sporadic, uncoordinated opposition.

"We can't tell who's in charge," Brooks said. "I don't think the Iraqi people can tell who's in charge either. We have indications that the Iraqi forces don't know who's in charge."

Brooks also claimed an important political success, stating that one of Iraq's leading Shiite clerics, the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Ali Sistani, had issued a fatwa, or religious edit, ordering followers not to interfere with coalition forces.

If true, this would be one of a growing number of signs that power may be starting to ebb from the Iraqi president and his regime.

Only last week, Sistani issued a fatwa ordering the faithful not to cooperate with the Americans.

In Baghdad, Iraq's trade minister, Mohammed Mahdi Saleh, continued his government's posture of defiance. He vowed the U.S.-led forces growing ever closer to the capital would not prevail.

"They will be defeated and they are now defeated because the war that is being waged on Iraq is a criminal war," he said at a news conference. "There is no reason for such mass murder of the Iraqi people."

Answering a reporter's question, Saleh said that he had met with Hussein Wednesday, as "you all saw on TV."

This was reference to a videotape in which Hussein was shown meeting with Cabinet ministers in a sparsely furnished room that appeared to have no windows. The tape, and Saleh's statement, appeared intended to respond to questions about Hussein's whereabouts, whether he remains in control, and, indeed, whether he is alive.

But there was no indication when the tape was made.

In southern Iraq, British troops still trying to gain full control of Basra, Iraq's second largest city, found Iraqi troops had commandeered outer neighborhoods and sent civilians deeper toward the city center.

This allowed the British to use artillery and air attacks with less fear of killing civilians--much as was the case in Umm Qasr, the port city to the south where British forces have gained control.

"They're stupid," a British officer said. "They did the same thing in Umm Qasr."

Meanwhile, British Col. Chris Vernon said his troops had taken 3,500 prisoners, including a general and other high-ranking officers.

"We're getting good, useful information from the senior POWs and the Baath Party officials," he said.

He disputed reports that cluster bombs had been dropped on Basra. He insisted the city was not under siege, because his troops had left the northeastern border unguard.

"We've definitely left the back door open," he said at a news conference in Kuwait City. "The military risk is that (Iraqi troops) could reinforce from the north, but we don't think he will do that."

The British strategy is to fight a conventional war against uniformed troops, an unconventional war against militia, and a war to win the support of the civilian population--all simultaneously.

Outside communications have been cut, and the British said they are broadcasting music and reassurances that they intend no harm to the civilians.

But some areas remain contested. Vernon said he was standing on a bridge on Wednesday when it was struck by 10 mortar rounds.

Marshall reported from Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar, and Perry from central Iraq. Times staff writers John Daniszewski in Baghdad, David Wharton in Kuwait City, Edwin Chen at Camp Lejeune, N.C. and James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this story. -- Los Angeles Times

Brudirect.com