- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Heavy
fighting raged in south and central Iraq on Wednesday and at least 15 Iraqi
civilians were killed in a Baghdad street by what may have been an errant
U.S. missile.
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- President Bush praised the "lethal precision"
of American pilots and warned Saddam Hussein that his day of reckoning
was near.
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- After a week of unrelenting attacks on targets in and
around the Iraqi capital, the missile strike in the Shaab district appeared
to be the first to hit a residential area causing substantial civilian
casualties.
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- A Pentagon spokesman said the United States did not target
anything in that district and he did not know if it was hit by an errant
U.S. missile or an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile falling back to earth.
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- Reuters correspondents counted 15 scorched corpses lying
amid blackened, mangled cars and rubble from broken buildings. Flames poured
from an oil truck. Yelling residents pulled a man with a bloody head from
rubble and said a pregnant woman was among the dead.
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- "Coalition forces did not target a marketplace nor
were any bombs or missiles dropped or fired" in the district where
the explosions occurred, said Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director
for operations for the U.S. Joint Staff.
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- "Another explanation could be that triple-A (anti-aircraft
artillery) or surface-to-air missile that missed its target fell back into
the marketplace area," McChrystal added.
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- FIGHTING NEAR BASRA
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- In southern Iraq, a British official said a column of
Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers poured out of Basra, where civilian
unrest was reported on Tuesday. As it headed south, it was immediately
attacked by U.S.-led air and artillery forces.
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- Near Baghdad, U.S. forces advancing toward the outskirts
of the city from the south fought bloody skirmishes, as a second day of
severe sandstorms buffeted the region.
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- U.S. troops fought a fierce battle with Iraqi forces
for control of a bridge over the Euphrates river close to the Shi'ite Muslim
shrine city of Najaf in southern Iraq.
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- A U.S. military officer monitoring the clash said an
unspecified number of U.S. tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles had been
destroyed by Iraqis armed with rocket propelled grenades and automatic
rifles at Abu Sukhayr, 13 miles southeast of Najaf.
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- He said he believed that the U.S. crews had escaped from
their vehicles but their fate was still unclear.
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- CNN said another large armored column of elite Republican
Guard units streamed out of Baghdad heading toward U.S. forces massed near
Najaf, who were braced for a battle.
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- Bush told hundreds of troops and their families in Florida
that U.S. fighting units were now facing desperate troops loyal to President
Saddam Hussein.
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- "We cannot predict the final day of the Iraqi regime,
but I can assure you, and I assure the long-suffering people of Iraq, there
will be a day of reckoning for the Iraqi regime, and that day is drawing
near," Bush said, speaking at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, which
houses U.S. Central Command.
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- "Our pilots and cruise missiles have struck vital
military targets with lethal precision," he said.
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- In contrast, he said Iraqi units "wage attacks while
posing as civilians. They use real civilians as human shields. They pretend
to surrender, then fire upon those who show them mercy," Bush said.
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- 'PROTECTING CIVILIANS'
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- "Protecting innocent civilians is a central commitment
of our war plan. Our enemy in this war is the Iraqi regime, not the people
who have suffered under it," he declared.
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- Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said
more than 500 people had been wounded and 200 homes destroyed as U.S. forces
stormed through Nassiriya city earlier.
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- A U.S. military official said some of the 12 soldiers
whose supply convoy was ambushed near Nassiriya in southern Iraq on Sunday
may have been killed by their captors although they tried to surrender.
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- The Pentagon said it was flying its high-tech 4th Infantry
Division and other units totaling more than 30,000 troops to the Gulf to
join the invasion of Iraq. Some commentators have said U.S. ground troops
were overstretched, especially since Iraqi resistance has been more troublesome
than expected.
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- Bush launched the war with British support to depose
Saddam and take control of his alleged weapons of mass destruction. Iraq
denied having any such weapons and U.S. forces have not yet found any.
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- Britain's defense minister Geoff Hoon accused Saddam
loyalists of firing at their own civilians to prevent them from rising
up against the government.
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- An Arab television channel broadcast video of two dead
soldiers and two prisoners of war, all said to be British.
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- Bush and Blair, his main ally on Iraq, meet in Washington
on Wednesday. The U.N. Security Council holds a public debate at the request
of Arab nations.
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- The United Nations World Food Program said Iraq would
probably need the biggest humanitarian operation in history to feed its
entire population after the U.S.-led invasion.
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- With the humanitarian situation in Basra causing growing
concern, British naval officers said they had finally secured Iraq's only
deepwater port of Umm Qasr on Tuesday.
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- A seven-truck convoy arrived there on Wednesday with
Kuwaiti aid for hungry and thirsty civilians in southern Iraq. Trucks of
medical equipment headed for Baghdad from Jordan.
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