- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United
States said its troops thrust into Baghdad for the first time on Saturday,
taking the 17-day-old war to topple President Saddam Hussein right into
his battered capital.
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- Iraq denied any U.S. forces were in Baghdad and said
its troops had driven the Americans from the international airport -- a
claim that a U.S. military spokesman said was groundless.
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- The U.S. spokesman said the push into Baghdad was "more
than a patrol that goes in and comes back out," adding that a "significant
number of troops" was moving into the city.
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- "We do now have troops in the city of Baghdad...they're
in the middle of the city of Baghdad," Captain Frank Thorp told Reuters
at Central Command in Qatar. "We will continue to move."
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- He would not say how many troops were in Baghdad or define
exactly what he meant by the middle of the city.
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- A Reuters correspondent who drove freely around the sprawling
city of five million saw no sign of U.S. forces in areas he visited.
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- "I went to the southern outskirts -- southeast,
southwest, the presidential palaces, the main security buildings,"
he said. "I saw no American troops."
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- As U.S. units pushed into Baghdad, other troops protected
their rear with a ground and air assault on the Shi'ite Muslim shrine city
of Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) to the southwest.
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- Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, holding
his regular daily news conference in a city hotel, denied any U.S. troops
were in Baghdad and said Republican Guards had driven the Americans from
the international airport.
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- "SPORADIC RESISTANCE"
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- Thorp spoke of sporadic but lively resistance. "There
were firefights, but if you're one of those folks who were involved in
that firefight on the ground, it was pretty intense."
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- U.S. military sources said at least 20 Abrams tanks and
10 Bradley fighting vehicles rumbled up a southern highway through the
city's Dawra suburb before swinging west and linking up with troops at
the airport southwest of the city center.
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- Four U.S. soldiers were wounded, one of them shot in
the head, in fighting in and around Baghdad, and an unidentified Iraqi
general was captured, U.S. military sources said.
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- Rocket-propelled grenades damaged one U.S. tank. A second
had to be abandoned in Baghdad because of mechanical failure.
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- Thorp said there had been sporadic fighting at the airport,
but denied Iraqi claims to have recaptured it.
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- U.S. forces called in air support to attack Iraqi tanks
on the northern edge of the airport, military sources said.
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- The Americans said they had won control of the airport,
20 km (12 miles) from the city center, on Friday. They say they hold the
runway, but not all outlying areas.
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- An Iraqi military spokesman said hundreds of U.S. troops
had been killed in the airport fighting.
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- "Everything is okay," Sahaf declared, listing
a string of what he said were Iraqi successes over the Americans.
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- There was no word on the whereabouts of Saddam as U.S.
forces made the first entry into Baghdad by foreign invaders since British
troops ousted a pro-German government in 1941.
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- Iraqi television showed footage on Friday of a smiling
Saddam touring Baghdad streets, greeting admirers as smoke rose in the
distance. It was not clear exactly when the footage was shot.
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- CIVILIAN CASUALTIES
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- The International Committee of the Red Cross said several
hundred wounded Iraqis had been admitted to Baghdad hospitals after U.S.
troops reached the city and fighting erupted.
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- "The situation in Baghdad is getting increasingly
difficult now that there's fighting in the city," Red Cross spokesman
Florian Westphal told Reuters from Geneva.
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- The push into Baghdad followed a blistering overnight
air and artillery barrage against its eastern flank.
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- As the war came closer, many people fled in cars packed
with blankets and belongings. The mood in the capital was grim.
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- "This is it. This is the final battle. We have no
way out," said Nour Khaled, 48, a mother of two. "We're confronting
the mightiest army in the world. What can we do? Where can we go?"
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- A retired British general said the U.S. advance into
Baghdad was probably an intelligence-gathering operation.
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- "I do not believe it is the final push," said
Major General Sir Patrick Cordingley, commander of the 7th Armored Brigade,
or "Desert Rats," in the 1991 Gulf War. "It might be, but
I suspect they are just collecting further information."
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- Even before overthrowing Saddam's government, the United
States will unveil the first stages of a civil administration for postwar
Iraq in the next few days, a U.S. official said.
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- The official, who declined to be named, said an announcement
might be made in the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.
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- REPUBLICAN GUARD HQ
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- U.S. forces seized the headquarters of the Medina Division
of Iraq's elite Republican Guards as they advanced on Baghdad, military
sources told Reuters correspondent Luke Baker.
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- "After they have searched it, they plan to burn
it," Baker said. The sources did not say exactly where the compound
was.
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- In the Kerbala fighting, helicopter-borne troops of the
101st Airborne Division landed on the western edge of town and moved in
beside a tank battalion with Apache attack helicopters overhead, Reuters
correspondent Kieran Murray reported.
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- Iraqi paramilitary forces fired assault rifles and rocket-propelled
grenades from city rooftops. U.S. forces hit back using attack helicopters,
artillery and heavy weapons.
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- "It's freaky in there. Lots of bullets flying around.
It's pretty scary," said one U.S. soldier who was evacuated after
being hit by fragments from a hand grenade.
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- U.S. officers said fighter jets had hit a Republican
Guard facility, the ruling Baath Party headquarters and an ammunitions
depot with 2,000 pound bombs shortly before midday.
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- Three huge plumes of smoke rose above Kerbala and secondary
explosions were heard after the air strikes.
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- South of Baghdad, a U.S. officer said first tests of
a white powder found in thousands of boxes showed it was not a chemical
weapon. Colonel John Peabody told Reuters most of it appeared to be the
nerve gas antidote atropine, and another chemical.
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- Washington launched the war vowing to oust Saddam and
rid Iraq of chemical and biological weapons. Baghdad denies having such
arms and invasion forces have yet to find any.
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- Turkey ordered the expulsion of three Iraqi diplomats
on Saturday, but a Turkish Foreign Ministry official said the move was
not a result of U.S. requests to shut down Iraqi missions.
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