- BAGDHAD -- There was no sign
of a US military presence in Baghdad on Saturday despite American officials'
claim that coalition troops were in town to stay, AFP correspondents reported.
-
- On the west bank of the Tigris river where most government
buildings are based, quiet had returned after a tense morning, enforced
by patrolling soldiers and other heavily armed men.
-
- Many of them were seen heading toward Saddam International
Airport on the southwestern outskirts of the city, which US forced announced
they captured Friday and now held "secure".
-
- Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf had
said earlier that President Saddam Hussein's crack Republican Guard had
driven coalition forces out of the facility in a prelude to a final rout
in the capital.
-
- Navy Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesperson for the US Central
Command, said earlier of the early-morning thrust into Baghdad: "This
wasn't a patrol - go in and come out.
-
- "We had the opportunity and we moved in," Thorp
said. "It was done in a deliberate way. When we had the opportunity
we took it and moved forward into the middle of the city."
-
- The city seemed strangely normal in the afternoon.
-
- While some militia fighters equipped with automatic weapons
and anti-tank rocket launchers manned city intersections, others were less
visible, holed up in entrenched positions.
-
- Soldiers and elite Republican Guard members and militiamen
were posted at a major intersection leading out of the city but appeared
as steely nerved as ever.
-
- In the Dora-Yarmuk in the southwest of the city, there
were traces of combat earlier in the day, including blown-up cars and casings
of heavy machine guns where Iraqi armoured tanks and anti-aircraft artillery
had been that morning.
-
- Even in the Al-Mamun district near the airport, motorists
took to the roads and no explosions were heard.
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- http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,6119,2-10-1460_1343684,00.html
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