- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Dawn
brought renewed but only sporadic shelling in central Baghdad on Wednesday
after a quiet night during which Americans, barely opposed and in their
thousands, swept through the suburbs of the Iraqi capital.
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- In the darkness, U.S. forces extended their grasp, moving
into the sprawling, poor suburb of Saddam City in the northeast, home to
at least two million people.
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- "I don't think I heard a single shot being fired,"
said Reuters reporter Sean Maguire who accompanied U.S. Marines into the
area which they took methodically, block by block.
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- It was one of Baghdad's calmest nights in three weeks
of war and the streets remained largely quiet into the morning.
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- In the heart of the city, however, Iraqis who have put
up some fierce but seemingly disorganized resistance against the might
of the U.S. military fired a rocket-propelled grenade at American positions
in the morning, a Reuters correspondent said.
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- Sporadic gun and tank fire resounded across the center,
and U.S. warplanes could be heard overhead before 8 a.m. Few people ventured
out on the streets.
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- The grenade was fired over the Tigris river toward U.S.
tanks at a presidential compound on the western bank. One Reuters reporter
said it seemed to come from an area near to the Palestine Hotel used by
journalists covering the war.
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- A U.S. tank killed two journalists at the hotel on Tuesday,
one from Reuters, the other from Spain's Telecinco television. Journalists
questioned the U.S. military's assertion that their forces had been fired
on from the hotel. An Al-Jazeera reporter also died when the station's
offices were hit in an air strike.
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- Bit by bit on Wednesday, President Saddam Hussein's fighters
appeared to be losing their hold on the city -- with much of the rest of
Iraq already out of their control.
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- Maguire reported from Saddam City, home to poor Shi'ite
Muslims traditionally marginalised by Saddam's Sunni Muslim government,
that the U.S. Marines were moving ever closer, and in their thousands,
to Baghdad center.
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- "They got a largely warm reception, with cheering
and clapping, as they swept through eastern suburbs on Tuesday," he
said.
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- REBUILDING WRANGLE
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- As optimistic as the U.S. assessments of military progress
were, diplomatic obstacles loomed as President Bush addressed the question
of reconstruction in a post-Saddam Iraq.
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- He met his main war ally, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, on Tuesday and they endorsed a "vital" U.N. role when
fighting ends, though their plans may fall short of European desires.
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- Pressed on what precisely the U.N. role would be, Bush
mentioned only humanitarian work, "suggesting" people to staff
the interim authority and helping Iraq "progress."
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- Vicious fighting raged on Tuesday, with explosions booming
in Baghdad as U.S. armor, artillery and aircraft took on defenders with
rifles and RPGs but without an apparent strategy.
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- "There has been no organized resistance or effort
to displace coalition forces," a U.S. military spokesman said.
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- The United States and Britain launched the war on Iraq
on March 20 to topple Saddam and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction,
which Iraq denies having.
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- There have been no confirmed finds of biological or chemical
agents. Many U.S. forces no longer wear protective clothing in a sign they
think the threat from such weapons has mostly passed.
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- WHERE IS SADDAM?
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- Nor has Saddam been found, despite the fact he was directly
targeted in the opening missile attack of the war and again on Tuesday
when U.S. bombers dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on a site in Baghdad where
he was believed to be.
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- "I don't know whether he survived," Bush told
reporters.
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- "The only thing I can tell you is ... that grip
I used to describe that Saddam had around the throats of the Iraqi people
is loosening. I can't tell you if all 10 fingers are off the throat but
finger by finger it's coming off."
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- British intelligence sources said Saddam probably survived.
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- "We think we just missed him," one told the
Daily Telegraph. "He was probably not in the building when it bombed,"
one anonymous intelligence source told The Guardian.
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- Residents of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, which
fell to British troops this week, complained of a power vacuum as armed
men roamed the streets, looting and pillaging.
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- "We are caught between two enemies, Saddam and the
British," said student Osama Ijam.
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- "Is this what they call a liberation? We want our
own government. We want our own security and our own law."
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- Reuters correspondent Peter Graff, touring the city with
British troops on Wednesday morning, said all appeared quiet. Children
waved at the marines. Most adults ignored them.
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- British officials said a local "sheikh" would
take over leadership in Basra province.
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- A U.S.-led civil administration started work in Iraq
on Tuesday when a score of officials deployed in the southern port of Umm
Qasr to assess humanitarian needs, a spokesman said.
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- The opposition Iraqi National Congress said leaders from
across southern Iraq flocked to the town of Nassiriya to greet its leader
Ahmad Chalabi. But a CIA report said he and other returning exiles would
find little support among Iraqis.
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- The classified CIA report appeared to be part of the
long and bitter struggle within the Bush administration over whether Chalabi
and his colleagues can be effective leaders.
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- U.S. planes bombed Iraqi positions in the northern oil
hub of Kirkuk but ground forces in the north made slow progress.
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