Rhune
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Is Saddam Dead?
« on: Apr 8th, 2003, 10:03am » |
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Bush: Saddam 'will be gone'
U.S., Iraqi forces clash at several sites in Baghdad
Tuesday, April 8, 2003 Posted: 9:23 AM EDT (1323 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- With fighting raging Tuesday in Baghdad, President Bush said he wasn't sure if Saddam Hussein was alive but he did know the Iraqi leader was losing his grip on power.
"Saddam Hussein will be gone," Bush said at a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Northern Ireland. "It might have been yesterday, I don't know, but he will be gone." (Full story)
The Iraqi people -- not the coalition or the United Nations -- will run the new Iraq, Blair insisted as he and Bush were concluding talks in Belfast on post-war Iraq, the Middle East and Northern Ireland. However, the United Nations should have a vital role in Iraq's reconstruction, Blair said.
The allied leaders' remarks came hours after a U.S. B-1 bomber dropped four 2,000-pound, satellite-guided bombs on a building in a Baghdad residential neighborhood suspected to contain Iraqi leaders, including Saddam and his two sons.
Sources said the blast Monday afternoon in the Mansour neighborhood killed nine people and wounded 13 others. A restaurant and apartments also were destroyed.
The strike was part of a larger effort by coalition forces to assert their control over the Iraqi capital and threaten Saddam's regime.
Early Tuesday, A-10 Warthog jets dropped bombs at five- to eight-second intervals over Baghdad, dipping in and out of low-cloud cover. The A-10s also strafed Iraqi positions with 30 mm cannons in the center of the city, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Ron Martz told CNN.
The action was similarly intense on the ground as U.S. forces continued to advance and fortify their positions deep inside the city.
In central Baghdad, flames shot from the upper floors of a high-rise, Saddam's Ministry of Planning building, during a firefight Tuesday morning between a U.S. armored unit and Iraqi forces, Abu Dhabi TV reported.
The conflict in Baghdad claimed the lives of three journalists Tuesday. One Al-Jazeera reporter died in a U.S. airstrike on a building housing Arab media, the Qatar-based TV network reported. A Spanish TV cameraman and Reuters cameraman also were killed and several other journalists were wounded in an explosion at the Palestine Hotel, reported Reuters and the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. U.S. military officials said U.S. forces responded to sniper fire from various floors at the hotel.
U.S. Marines continued their slow but steady advance into southeastern Baghdad. The units, backed by close air support, met sporadic Iraqi resistance at an industrial complex that included a soft-drink bottling factory, brewery and cigarette factory, reported CNN's Martin Savidge, who is embedded with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines.
Marines also attacked and seized the Rasheed military airfield in southeast Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at a U.S. Central Command briefing Tuesday.
Tuesday's firefights came a day after U.S. forces reported major advances in the Iraqi capital, taking at least two of Saddam's palaces. After two days of in-and-out raids, three battalions of the U.S. Army's 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry, stayed in the city overnight, sources told CNN's Walter Rodgers, who is embedded with the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry of the 3rd Infantry Division.
The coalition assault has left Iraq with 19 tanks out of its fleet of 800, a senior U.S. official told CNN. The official said that remnants of the Republican Guard continue to battle around Baghdad but that they have no armored units and are no longer organized.
Other developments
• Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, 3rd Brigade, engaged Fedayeen Saddam fighters in a fierce firefight Tuesday for control of Hillah, a city about 50 miles south of Baghdad, according to CNN's Ryan Chilcote, who is embedded with the unit.
• U.S. Marines in southeastern Baghdad found scores of chemical suits, as well as masks and a box of atropine injectors, that appeared to have been hastily abandoned Tuesday in a field that had been targeted by coalition airstrikes, CNN's Savidge reported.
• A Russian convoy that came under fire over the weekend may have deviated from its planned evacuation route, U.S. Army V Corps senior commanders told the National Journal. U.S. military officials said they understood the convoy would travel west on Highway 10 out of Baghdad, but the group went farther north -- possibly into the thick of a firefight.
• With Iraqi regular and irregular forces deemed ineffective, the British military has begun efforts to form an indigenous civil administration in Basra province with help from a tribal leader. A local sheik who approached British officials will form a committee to chart the future government of the southeastern Iraqi region, Col. Chris Vernon said.
On Monday, an Iraqi missile slammed into the tactical operations center for the U.S. Army's 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, in Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers and two journalists and wounding 15 other people, CNN's Rodgers reported. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo said one if its reporters was killed, as was a German photographer.
The discovery Monday of drums of what might be chemical weapons materials south of the Iraqi capital raised concerns among U.S. officials, who have feared that Iraq might unleash chemical weapons as troops moved into Baghdad. Iraqi officials have denied their country has such weapons. The materials are being tested.
U.S. Special Forces are trying to seize a strategic highway that links the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, according to CNN's Ben Wedeman. The strategy is to cut off and isolate the cities rather than going into them, Wedeman said.
The Iraqi National Congress, a group that opposes Saddam's regime, said its forces have joined the military campaign. A unit called the 1st Battalion Free Iraqi Forces, made up of 700 troops, began deployment near Nasiriya in the south, and the number of forces in central and southern Iraq is expected to be increased.
Irregular Iraqi forces, some wearing women's clothing, ambushed a U.S. Marine platoon of light-armored vehicles Monday in the central Iraqi city of Ab Diwaniyah, but the U.S. unit escaped without casualties, Marines in the firefight said.
CNN Correspondents Jill Dougherty, Art Harris, James Martone, Tom Mintier, Diana Muriel, Walter Rodgers, Brent Sadler, Martin Savidge, Barbara Starr and Ben Wedeman contributed to this report.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This report was written in accordance with Pentagon ground rules allowing so-called embedded reporting, in which journalists join deployed troops. Among the rules accepted by all participating news organizations is an agreement not to disclose sensitive operational details.
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