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- Herald Correspondent Lindsay Murdoch, travelling with
a Marines artillery unit, reports on one of the war's first battles on
the Iraq-Kuwait border.
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- There was little initial resistance as the United States
Marines swept into southern Iraq early yesterday. One of the first encounters
of the ground war was more like a massacre than a fight.
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- The Iraqi gunners fired first, soon after United States
President George Bush announced the attack on Saddam Hussein was under
way.
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- It was a fatal mistake.
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- The Iraqi artillery unit, preparing for the American
invasion, had tested the range by firing registering shots at a likely
spot where the American tanks would cross from Kuwait. US radar picked
up the incoming shells and pinpointed their source.
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- Within hours, the Iraqi gunners and their Russian-made
122mm howitzers were destroyed as the Americans unleashed an artillery
barrage that shook the ground and lit up the night sky with orange flashes.
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- "Dead bodies are everywhere," a US officer
reported by radio.
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- Later in the day, the American firepower was turned on
Safwan Hill, an Iraqi military observation post a couple of kilometres
across the border. About six hours after US marines and their 155mm howitzer
guns pulled up at the border, they opened up with a deafening barrage.
Safwan Hill went up in a huge fireball and the Iraqi observation post was
obliterated.
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- "I pity anybody who's in there," a marine sergeant
said. "We told them to surrender."
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- The destruction of Safwan Hill was a priority for the
attacking forces because it had sophisticated surveillance equipment near
the main highway that runs from Kuwait up to Basra and then Baghdad. The
attacking US and British forces could not attempt to cross the border unless
it was destroyed.
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- Marine Cobra helicopter gunships firing Hellfire missiles
swept in low from the south. Then the marine howitzers, with a range of
30 kilometres, opened a sustained barrage over the next eight hours. They
were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives
and napalm, a US officer told the Herald.
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- A legal expert at the International Committee of the
Red Cross in Geneva said the use of napalm or fuel air bombs was not illegal
"per se" because the US was not a signatory to the 1980 weapons
convention which prohibits and restricts certain weapons. "But the
US has to apply the basic principles of International Humanitarian Law
(IHL) and take all precautions to protect civilians. In the case of napalm
and fuel air bombs, these are special precautions because these are area
weapons, not specific weapons," said Dominique Loye, the committee's
adviser on weapons and IHL.
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- When dawn broke on Safwan Hill, all that could be seen
on top of it was a single antenna amid the smoke. The marines then moved
forward, their officers saying they were determined to push on as quickly
as possible for Baghdad.
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- The first air strike on Baghdad, and Mr Bush's announcement
that the war was under way, appeared to catch US officers in the Kuwait
desert by surprise.
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- The attack was originally planned for early today. But
the US officers did not seem worried.
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- Within hours of Mr Bush's announcement, a vast army of
tanks, trucks, bulldozers and heavy guns was surging through the dust of
the Kuwaiti desert to positions on Iraq's border.
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