- The IRAQWAR.RU analytical center was created recently
by a group of journalists and military experts from Russia to provide accurate
and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq. The following
is the English translation of the IRAQWAR.RU report based on the Russian
military intelligence (the Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU) reports.
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- [The following translation of the iraqwar.ru report has
been kindly provided by "Necroman". You can find the original
report in Russian as well as this translation on the iraqwar.ru site. Venik]
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- April 6, 2003, 2000hrs MSK (GMT +4 DST), Moscow UPDATE
- Around Baghdad skirmishes between coalition forces and Iraqi divisions
are going on. As we said before, during the next two days the coalition
troops will extend the zone of blockade to the west and north-west using
local strikes. Currently a part of the 1st brigade of the 3rd Mechanized
Division is outflanking the city from Abu-Harraib, trying to reach the
south outskirts and seize a strategic bridge across the Tigris at the north
of the Tunis area (Salakh-Khasan).
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- Fire has not stopped near the Airport, both sides are
using artillery. According to the most recent data the rush of the coalition
forces toward to the southern borders of Baghdad, though expected by the
Iraqi command, was tactically surprise. Hidden in the interiors of the
city, parts of the Iraqi army were unable to leave their covered positions,
advance and face the enemy. There arouse confusion that led to disorganization
of the Iraqi squadrons that engaged their rivals "on the move",
without proper reconnaissance and concentration of forces. According to
specified information in different conflicts and during the assault of
the airport up to 400 Iraqi soldiers were killed, 25 tanks and 12 guns
were lost.
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- But the coalition command also faced serious problems.
Powerful Iraqi attacks aimed at the airport immobilized most of the force
breaking towards Baghdad and it turned out necessary to bring reinforcements
from other sectors of the front in order to succeed. In particular, up
to 2 battalions of the 101st Airborne Division located by An-Nasiriya and
An-Najaf and at least 1 battalion of the 82nd Division were moved there.
Americans tolls at the south and south-east of Baghdad for the last 24
hours amount to: up to 30 men killed and at least 80 wounded, 15 soldiers
are known to be missing. The Americans lost at least 8 tanks and 5 APC.
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- Marine squadrons are still incapable of breaking down
defenses by the Diyala river. Currently the vanguards are trying to outflank
the city from east and seize the bridge in the New Baghdad region.
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- There are not enough coalition forces to block such a
city, and the troops blocking An-Nasiriya, An-Najaf, Al-Kut and Al-Diwaniya
were given categorical orders to break down the Iraqi resistance in the
next 3 days, take control of those areas and advance toward Baghdad to
join the blockade.
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- To organize offensive against Karbala the blocking troops
were enforced with one expeditionary marine squadron, and another storm
started this morning. There is no information about casualties from this
region yet.
- Analogous tasks were set before the British command at
the south of Iraq near Basra.
- For the past 2 days the British have tried to overcome
Iraqi defenses from An-Zubair and the Manavi regions 3 times, but they
still cannot break down the resistance. This morning an armored column
was able to come up to a strategic cross-road near Akhavat-Rezan, but got
under heavy fire and had to retreat.
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- Yesterday and during this morning the British lost at
least 3 armored units, 2 men killed and 6 wounded.
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- The coalition command and the foreign policy departments
of Russia and USA are now making every effort to close all the information
related to the Russian embassy getting fired near Baghdad.
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- Sources claim that the embassy ceased its activities
in many respects because of the danger of an air strike on the embassy.
The American command was utterly irritated by the presence of the Russian
embassy in Baghdad and believed that some technical intelligence equipment
was deployed there that provided the Iraqis with information. Moreover,
some officers in the coalition HQ in Qatar openly claimed that it was on
the territory of the Russian embassy that the "jammers" hampering
the high-precision weapons around Baghdad were operated.
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- Yesterday morning the Secretary of State Colin Powell
demanded of immediate evacuation of the embassy from the Russian Minister
of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov. Yesterday evening the Russian minister
informed the Americans that on the 6th of April the embassy column would
be leaving Baghdad heading for the Syrian border. This gave rise to dissatisfaction
among the State Department officials who suggested that the column should
move to Jordan.
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- The coalition special operations HQ were sure that the
embassy column would contain secret devices taken from military equipment
captured by Iraqis. In this connection one cannot shut out the possibility
of "revenge" from the coalition command.
- Moreover, experts claim that the purpose of this armed
assault could be to damage a few cars where the Russians would have to
leave some of the salvage. This is also indicated by the fact that neither
the ambassador himself nor journalists in the column were among the injured.
In this case we can expect that this action was committed by coalition
special forces and the column was shot using Russian-made weapons to conceal
the origin of the attackers to blame the Iraqis afterwards.
- According to the most recent data the column got ambushed
almost 30 km to the west from the city on the territory occupied by the
coalition, but moving fast it escaped from fire and made a few more kilometers
where it was blocked by military jeeps. On attempting to establish contact
with their crews it received fire again, then the jeeps vanished.
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- Today at 5pm a phone conversation between president of
Russia Vladimir Putin and president of the USA George W. Bush took place.
Before this conversation, his assistant for National Security Affairs Condoleezza
Rice, who came into Moscow today, had consulted Bush. At this time Rice
is meeting Igor Ivanov, the head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The details of this meeting are unknown so far, but we can suppose that
very soon some "unknown squadrons" will be made responsible for
the incident and the situation will be dampened to the maximum.
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- Analysts reckon that the situation with the nuclear submarine
"Kursk", when a whole series of private contacts between top
Russian officials and American representatives brought more questions than
answers, is about to occur again to some extent.
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- (source: iraqwar.ru, 04-06-03, translated by Necroman)
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