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U.S. Marines battle for Tikrit
« on: Apr 14th, 2003, 10:23am » |
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U.S. Marines battle for Tikrit
Firefight in Baghdad signals Iraqi capital still may not be stable
Monday, April 14, 2003 Posted: 10:42 AM EDT (1442 GMT)
TIKRIT, Iraq (CNN) -- Coalition forces have assaulted Tikrit from the south, west and north and have successfully secured the presidential palace in the north-central Iraqi city, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks of U.S. Central Command said Monday.
Troops have been searching Tikrit for remaining regime supporters, Brooks said. Tikrit is Saddam Hussein's ancestral homeland and the last major Iraqi city not under coalition control.
U.S. Marines on Monday morning pushed into the heart of Tikrit. The troops began to move into the city with "substantial force" about 6 a.m. Monday (10 p.m. EDT Sunday), according to Matthew Fisher, a correspondent for Canada's National Post newspaper who is embedded with the Marines.
The Marines were using "massive air power," including many helicopters, according to Fisher. He said thousands of Marines were in the city and facing no great resistance.
Brooks said opposition in Tikrit was "lighter than we expected." He said U.S. forces had been successful in "isolating" Republican Guard elements in the city so that leaders could not give orders, units were cut off from one another, and in some cases, assets were destroyed.
But another Central Command spokesman, Col. Frank Thorp, said, "The battle isn't over yet."
The Marines have encountered "small, fierce but very localized ... fighting," Thorp said.
Marines engaged Saddam loyalists mainly from the city outskirts Sunday, destroying five manned Iraqi tanks and killing between 15 and 20 Iraqi fighters after engaging an infantry unit, Fisher said.
Al-Jazeera television crews showed low-flying U.S. Cobra attack helicopters sweeping over the city around 8:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m. EDT), and later footage showed U.S. forces flanking armored personnel carriers in the city center.
Marines occupied the Iraqi leader's 2.5-square-mile palace compound, one of Saddam's largest and most elaborate presidential sites. Born in the nearby village of Auja, Saddam was raised in Tikrit, and many Iraqi regime and Baath Party leaders come from there.
Some inhabitants were seen fleeing north, while others armed themselves to defend their families, according to an Al-Jazeera reporter on the scene. The city has no electricity or running water, the Qatar-based, Arabic language network said, and tribal chieftains said Saddam's clan and army units had left the city days earlier.
While U.S. Marines increased their grip on Tikrit, sporadic fighting continued early Monday in Baghdad, which fell to coalition forces last week.
Holed up in a central Baghdad building, gunmen battled Marines for nearly two hours until U.S. forces took three men into custody whom they suspect of initiating the firefight.
Marines said the men were guards at a nearby club and had been hiding near a gas station in Firdos Square, where U.S. forces helped a crowd of Iraqis topple a 40-foot statue of Saddam last week. The area also includes the Palestine Hotel, home base for most journalists covering the war.
Other developments
Seven American prisoners of war rescued by U.S. Marines on Sunday said they were treated fairly well by their Iraqi captors but lived in constant fear they would be killed, Peter Baker from The Washington Post reported Monday. Baker traveled with the freed soldiers from a U.S. air base in Iraq to Kuwait.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has called on Syria to cooperate over U.S. allegations it is harboring Iraqi fugitives or developing illegal chemical weapons. Syria has denied the allegations, saying it was "misinformation" to divert attention from civil disorder in Iraq.
Coalition forces are hunting down fighters who have come in from outside Iraq, Brooks said Monday. Among the non-Iraqi fighters, the "greatest density" are Syrians, Brooks said, but other nationalities have been represented as well. These fighters have played a variety of roles, joining Iraqi units and ambushing coalition troops in groups of 10 to 20, he said. Brooks said Central Command believes some of these fighters have explosive vests that could be used in suicide bombings.
Coalition forces have secured several Iraqi hospitals in recent days, transferring patients in substandard places to other Iraqi hospitals and coalition medical facilities, Brooks said Monday. More than 100 noncombatants, including Iraqi civilians, are receiving health care aboard the USNS Comfort, a U.S. military medical ship in the Persian Gulf, according to Brooks.
Spain ordered seven Iraqi officials to leave the country by Wednesday after 21 guns and 800 rounds of ammunition were found at the Iraqi Embassy in Madrid, Spain's Foreign Ministry said Monday. Two other Iraqi diplomats -- including one who told Spain last week about the weapons cache -- will not be expelled, and the embassy will remain open, the Foreign Ministry said.
Saddam's half-brother, Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, is in U.S. custody after attempting to escape to Syria from Iraq, a U.S. official said Sunday. Al-Tikriti was on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqi senior leaders.
While Thorp, a Central Command spokesman, confirmed Monday that the United States had two of the 55 most-wanted Iraqi officials in custody, he left it "up in the air" as to whether or not more of Iraq's leaders had been captured by coalition forces. Thorp said Central Command would not make an announcement every time the military captured someone on the list. (55 most-wanted Iraqis)
A U.S. military official said Monday that "indications are" a Patriot missile shot down an F/A-18C Hornet fighter over Iraq on April 2, killing the pilot. The Defense Department identified the Navy pilot as Lt. Nathan D. White, 30, of Mesa, Arizona. It would be the second friendly-fire incident involving a coalition aircraft during the war in Iraq.
U.N. relief agencies expect to return to Iraq by Monday to resume humanitarian efforts. The United Nations pulled its staff out of the country March 18.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Sunday that the Iraqi army has been destroyed and "there is no regime command and control." But he said pockets of paramilitary and foreign fighters remain throughout the country.
CNN Correspondents Christiane Amanpour, Rula Amin, Jane Arraf, Bob Franken, Michael Holmes, Tom Mintier, Thomas Nybo and Brent Sadler contributed to this report.
EDITOR'S NOTE: CNN's policy is to not report information that puts operational security at risk.
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