- UMM QASR, Iraq (Reuters)
- U.S. Marines faced pockets of Iraqi resistance in the strategic Iraqi
port of Umm Qasr on Saturday, a day after Washington said it had won control.
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- The Marines also said that U.S. and British forces had
taken between 400 and 450 Iraqi prisoners in fighting around Umm Qasr,
Iraq's only deep-water port, and the nearby Faw peninsula which controls
access from the Gulf to Iraq's tiny coast.
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- "We did meet some resistance, it's probably not
going as quick as we would have liked," Colonel Thomas Waldhauser,
Commanding Officer of the 15th Marine expeditionary unit, told reporters
in Umm Qasr.
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- "There is still some slight resistance within the
town," he said, more than a day after starting an assault on the port.
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- He said the Marines hoped to secure Umm Qasr later on
Saturday. One U.S. Marine died in the fighting for the port. Waldhauser
said he had no idea of Iraqi casualties.
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- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington
on Friday that U.S. and British forces had captured Umm Qasr. Iraqi Information
Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf on Saturday dismissed Rumsfeld's statement
as "illusions and lies."
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- Reuters reporter Adrian Croft, in Umm Qasr, said that
he heard a burst of machinegun fire on Saturday and the sound of artillery
apparently fired at the town.
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- U.S. Marines also set up a mortar but did not fire. Waldhauser
said defenders had had small arms, rifles, mortars, rocket propelled grenades
and some artillery.
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- LAST-MINUTE REINFORCEMENTS
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- Waldhauser said that some of the defenders were dressed
in civilian clothes and that some had been brought in at the last minute
to resist the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq aimed at toppling Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein that started on Thursday.
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- "At times military units start to change into civilian
clothes. They move and claim they are not in the military," he said.
He also said they were also hiding among civilians.
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- Croft also saw British forces delivering about 50 prisoners
of war to a small beach at Umm Qasr in 10 rubber dinghies. Wearing plastic
handcuffs, they were transferred to a warehouse with other prisoners.
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- "Two had to be brought in on stretchers," Croft
said. "Two others were limping and needed help. Some of them had no
shoes."
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- Waldhauser said the Marines would start trying to check
piers and cranes in the port for booby traps. U.S.-led forces want to use
the port for humanitarian.
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- "Our ambition is to open the port and get humanitarian
aid into the people of southern Iraq as quickly as possible," Group
Captain Al Lockwood, main spokesman for British forces at command headquarters
in Qatar, told Reuters.
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- Flight Lieutenant Peter Darling told reporters at the
Qatar headquarters: "What we're trying to do now is clear that waterway
of mines and obstructions to get ships in for humanitarian aid. It's a
way of making sure we don't end up with a huge refugee problem."
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- He said the forces were planning to make a first shipment
of humanitarian aid in about 72 hours
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- "I believe there's a 72-hour expectation (before
the first ship), but it depends on the damage to the facilities, it depends
whether there are mines there," he said.
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- British Brigadier Jim Dutton, commander of Third Commando
Brigade of the British Royal Marines, reiterated that his forces had captured
the southern end of the Faw peninsula.
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- "At the moment we are secure at the bottom end (of
the peninsula)...The plan is eventually to move forward to the southern
edge of (the nearby port city of) Basra. We started doing that now, cleaning
up the peninsula," he said.
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