- NEAR NAJAF/BAGHDAD (Reuters)
- U.S. troops edged on toward Baghdad on Sunday but met some stubborn resistance,
while waves of bombs and missiles pounded President Saddam Hussein's capital
for a fourth day.
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- Iraq said 77 civilians had been killed in fighting at
its second city of Basra in the far south, and reported deadly air raids
on the Iraqi president's home town, Tikrit.
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- After winning a fierce battle, an armored U.S. column
pushed on toward the central city of Najaf and came within 110 miles of
the Iraqi capital, a Reuters reporter said.
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- But correspondents with U.S. and British units in Iraq
reported widespread clashes -- near Umm Qasr, on Iraq's narrow south coast,
Najaf, a holy city for Iraq's Shi'ite majority, and Nassiriya where the
Euphrates river was crossed.
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- "There's a serious firefight going on here,"
Reuters' Adrian Croft said from Umm Qasr, a day after U.S. officials said
they had won control of the strategic port.
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- "There is a hell of a lot of machine gun fire going
on." Two targets were bombed on the outskirts of the town.
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- Britain said a U.S. missile appeared to have brought
down one its planes, in what would be the first repeat of the "friendly
fire" accidents that plagued the 1991 Gulf War.
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- Iraqi state television said Saddam, who U.S. forces tried
to kill in the first wave of attacks early on Thursday morning, chaired
a meeting of his top officials on Saturday and declared he was satisfied
with his forces' resistance on the ground.
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- His air force, devastated in the Gulf War and kept in
check by Western planes ever since, was nowhere to be seen, but Iraq said
its ground forces shot down five planes and two helicopters.
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- A U.S. official said there were no reports of missing
aircraft.
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- BATTLES IN CENTRAL IRAQ
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- The ruling Baath party said U.S. forces fled after a
desert clash near Najaf, in which the local party leader was killed.
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- But U.S. military sources there said that around 70 Iraqis
were killed in a battle south of the city overnight, with pockets of defenders
still fighting elsewhere.
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- "The impression I get from talking to several officers
is that they are surprised at the level of resistance and that more Iraqis
haven't surrendered," said Reuters correspondent Luke Baker, 12 miles
south of Najaf with units of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division.
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- Reporter Sean Maguire also said fighting had blocked
the U.S. advance near Nassiriya, between Najaf and Kuwait, from where the
land invasion was launched on Thursday night.
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- "We're blocked. We can't go ahead because of security
concerns because of this resistance," he said from his position about
20 miles southeast of the city.
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- U.S. forces expect resistance to stiffen the closer they
get to Baghdad.
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- Fresh air raids shook Baghdad on Sunday, by day as well
as night, shattering the nerves of residents for a fourth day, targeting
government buildings and symbols of Saddam's power.
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- One massive blast shook the ground in the center, Reuters
reporters said. Power was briefly knocked out.
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- Iraqi forces set oil-filled trenches ablaze around the
capital in an apparent bid to create a smokescreen, but it is likely to
be little defense against satellite-guided weapons.
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- SADDAM'S HOME TOWN ATTACKED
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- Saddam's small home town and stronghold of Tikrit north
of Baghdad was bombed heavily, killing four people, Iraqi satellite television
said.
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- Officials have also reported three deaths from raids
in the capital, with about 250 wounded. Red Cross workers saw about 200
people described as war-wounded in Baghdad hospitals.
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- A British military spokesman said "Basra is not
yet secured," but forces were closing on the oil city.
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- The battle appears to have been bloody. An Iraqi minister
said 77 civilians had been killed there and 366 wounded.
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- Qatar-based al-Jazeera television put the toll at 50
and showed grisly footage of dead and wounded. One scene beamed across
the Arab world showed a child with the back of its head blown off.
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- U.S. and British forces have confirmed only two deaths
of their soldiers in battle so far, both U.S. marines, but 19 deaths in
two helicopter crashes.
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- At a rear base in Kuwait, another U.S. soldier was killed
and 12 wounded when grenades were thrown into a command tent. The military
said one of its own men was held as a suspect.
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- Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said
defenders were still fighting U.S. forces around Nassiriya and had destroyed
16 U.S. tanks and armored vehicles.
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- The resistance looks set to delay, but not ultimately
to prevent, the advance on Baghdad.
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- Advance columns have now covered about two thirds of
the 300 miles to the city in just two days.
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- "We're making satisfactory progress on our timelines,"
a British spokesman said at war headquarters in the Gulf state of Qatar.
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- Near Nassiriya, troops managed to take control of bridgeheads
and crossed the Euphrates river from the western desert to the fertile
and more populous Mesopotamian plain.
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- Mosul, in northern Iraq where a planned second invasion
front has been thwarted by Turkey's reluctance to act as a conduit, came
under renewed air attack in the middle of the day, said Reuters reporter
Jon Hemming from nearby Kurd-held territory.
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- PROTESTS
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- Away from the battlefields, hundreds of thousands of
people around the world protested at the war, which has split the West
and inflamed anti-American sentiment, but opinion polls showed Britons
and Americans rallying to their leaders.
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- President Bush is acting under a new doctrine that says
the United States can wage preemptive war against any country it deems
a threat.
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- Bush says Iraq has stocks of chemical and biological
weapons that could find their way into the hands of terrorists.
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- But U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, vice director for
operations on the U.S. military's Joint Staff, said American forces in
Iraq had yet to find any evidence of chemical or biological weapons, or
banned Scud missiles.
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- Moscow, along with Paris and Berlin a strong opponent
of the war, vowed it would block any future moves by the United States
and its allies to win U.N. blessing for the invasion and post-war power
structures they might set up in Iraq.
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- Regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia urged the United States
and Iraq to halt what it termed an illegitimate war that risked igniting
further Arab fury. Syria demanded an immediate end to what it called the
"barbaric aggression."
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