The Hindu : Bombs rain on Baghdad

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 22, 2003

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Bombs rain on Baghdad

Thick smoke fills the sky from an oil well fire in this image from television, in Iraq on Friday. — AP/CNN

WASHINGTON MARCH 21. The United States launched a long-expected massive aerial campaign against Iraq on Friday night, officials said.

Enormous explosions were visible around Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, even as American officials continued surrender talks with senior Iraqi officials. The air campaign, which until Friday had been limited to selective strikes, escalated dramatically as U.S. ground forces rolled toward Baghdad.

Pentagon officials have dubbed the aerial strategy ``shock and awe'' to reflect the goal of paralysing the Iraqi military and compelling the regime of President Saddam Hussein to capitulate before U.S. and allied forces reached the gates of Baghdad.

One senior U.S. official said the aerial campaign might not be as intense as originally planned — at least in the opening hours — because there was still time for more surrender talks.

This official said Gen. Tommy Franks, the war's top commander, would ``scale'' the intensity of the bombardment in accordance with progress in the surrender talks. Within hours, however, it would be too late to reach a successful conclusion to the talks, and then, without such a conclusion, the bombing would go full-throttle, the official said.

Another official said the assault was ordered after U.S. forces met some resistance earlier in the day, raising concerns that the Iraqi high command was regaining control. In the first hours of the war, administration officials had detected evidence that the Iraqi leadership was in disarray.

The ground campaign, led by the Army's 3rd Infantry Division and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, began on Thursday. Originally it was to follow the massive aerial bombardment, but Gen. Franks reversed the order, in part because of concern about Iraq setting southern oil fields afire, a senior official said.

The United States has an enormous fleet of Navy and Air Force warplanes primed for the aerial bombardment, including B-52, B-1 and B-2 stealth bombers and a full array of fighter-bombers.

There are roughly 250 strike aircraft on five Navy aircraft carriers — three in the Gulf and two in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. These include F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcats. The Air Force's fighters are based mainly in Kuwait and Qatar, but there are many others in the region.

All of these aircraft are capable of launching precision-guided bombs and missiles.

American and British troops encountered both hostile fire and white flags in their sprint across the desert Friday. Iraqi defenders offered stiff resistance in some pockets, firing intense artillery barrages that were answered in kind.

First casualties

A U.S. marine with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in a gunfight as his unit advanced on the oil field. Hours earlier, eight British and four American soldiers died in a U.S. Marine helicopter crash that a British military spokesman said was an accident.

Troops seized two airfields in far western Iraq, known as H-2 and H-3, without much resistance from Iraqi troops, defence officials said. But they called control of the installations ``tentative.''

They are important partly because Saddam Hussein is believed to have Scud missiles there. The H-3 airfield has been one of Iraq's primary air-defence installations.

Strategic port captured

U.S. Marines seized the strategic southern port city of Umm Qasr today and took Iraqi soldiers captive but were still mopping up pockets of Iraqi resistance, U.S. military sources said.

Umm Qasr, located along the Kuwait border about 460 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, would give U.S. and British forces access to a port for military and humanitarian supplies and hasten the end of Iraqi resistance in the south.

The U.S. Marines described the Iraqi prisoners as being draftees who were in very poor condition rather than ``top-notch Republican Guard types.''

``I kind of felt sorry for them,'' the military official said. ``A lot of them looked hungry. They haven't been fed in a while.''

In London, the British Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, said British and American forces began the operation to take Umm Qasr early today while British Marines secured the tip of the nearby al-Faw peninsula, Iraq's access point to the Persian Gulf and the site of major oil facilities. He said the British Army's 7th Armoured Brigade — the Desert Rats — had crossed into Iraq early today, providing flank protection for the coalition thrust, and had engaged with Iraqi forces. Mr. Hoon said four Iraqis were killed in a "small-scale engagement" on the al-Faw peninsula.

Mr. Hoon added that up to 30 oil wells had been set afire, but said these were among hundreds in southern Iraq.

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