The Hindu : U.S. forces take over Baghdad airport

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 05, 2003

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U.S. forces take over Baghdad airport

The U.S. forces taking position at a gate of the Saddam International Airport outside Baghdad on Friday. — AP

NEAR BAGHDAD (IRAQ) APRIL 4. U.S. forces secured Baghdad's Saddam International Airport today, a crucial step in their bid to establish a base of operations for coalition forces just outside the Iraqi capital, and renamed it as Baghdad International Airport.

``It is a gateway to the future of Iraq,'' said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, U.S. Central Command spokesman at a briefing at the Central Command headquarters in Qatar. He said that in western Iraq, a car exploded at a special operations checkpost, killing three coalition soldiers, a pregnant woman and the car's driver.

A report, quoting witnesses said that the airport had come under artillery fire leaving dozens killed and injured outside Baghdad.

In capturing the airport, U.S. tanks punched through a perimeter wall and rumbled past a towering portrait of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein. Soldiers conducted a building-by-building sweep for Iraqi defenders. And the airport entrance closest to Baghdad was sealed off.

This prevents Iraq's leaders from fleeing by air and enables coalition forces to use it now or in the future, Brig. Brooks said. ``Most important, we preserved it for the future of Iraq,'' he said.

The Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaff, told newsmen in Baghdad that the American forces would be "annihilated". The Iraqi forces had surrounded the coalition units and cut them off from other units near the city, he said, adding that Iraq would carry out a ``non-conventional'' attack against the U.S. troops.

``Tonight we will carry out something that is non-conventional against them, not military. It will be a great example to them,'' he said.

"Unless they surrender quickly, I don't think there's any chance that they will survive,'' he said, referring to the U.S. forces outside Baghdad. ``We consider it an isolated island"

Republican guards surrender

Meanwhile, to the southeast of Baghdad, the Marines reported that about 2,500 Republican Guards surrendered between the cities of Kut and Baghdad. The former pulled on chemical suits as they prepared for what could be the final assault on Mr. Hussein's seat of power.

The attack on the airport began at dusk on Thursday with units of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division moving in to seize the nearly four-km main runway. Gunshots were heard from inside. It was unclear how many Iraqi troops remained in the airport.

Navy warplanes from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk dropped scores of satellite and laser-guided bombs on the airport and a nearby military complex on Thursday night and early on Friday. F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcat strike fighters hit a hanger and fuel depot at the airport with a barrage of 225-kg laser-guided bombs, said Lt. Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the ship.

Eight 900-kg satellite-guided bombs were dropped on a target listed as a military complex near the airport, Lt. DeWalt said. Other targets included artillery posts, a possible surface-to-air missile site and bunkers, he added. The U.S. Marine 1st Division was massed on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad on Friday morning after hours of pushing up the Tigris river past abandoned Iraqi positions with little resistance.

However, an Iraqi force was believed standing between them and the capital. Despite high temperatures, the Marines pulled on stifling protection suits in case of chemical attack.

A bombed out plane at the airport. — AP

On Friday, members of the 3rd Infantry continued a sweep through the outskirts of Baghdad amid palm groves, paddy fields, cornfields and irrigation canals and came across what appeared to be the front line of a Republican Guard company.

A firefight broke out and two Republican Guards in uniform were wounded. Two Republican Guards who had put on civilian clothes were also taken prisoner. One, speaking through an interpreter, said: ``We got bombed last night, and most of our tanks were destroyed.''

Near Numaniyah, southeast of Baghdad, Marines manned a checkpoint on Friday on a highway leading to the capital and said they were seeing a steady flow of young men they suspected were Iraqi soldiers trying to rejoin their shattered units.

Elsewhere, U.S. air strikes and Kurdish Peshmerga militia forced Iraqi troops to pull back along the road towards the northern oil city of Mosul today, after 24 hours of heavy bombing.

A Reuters photographer said the retreat started at around midday, when Iraqi troops pulled back from trenches where they had held out since late yesterday morning, after coming under repeated strikes from U.S. aircraft. "A vice is closing on the regime," the U.S. President, George W. Bush, told Marines at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, had lost control of 45 per cent of Iraq's territory. Gen. Myers indicated there may not be an all-out battle for Baghdad but that members of Mr. Hussein's regime might be isolated and replaced with a ``interim administration.'' — AP, AFP, Reuters

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