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Baghdad faces intense daylight bombing US-led coalition opens new front Jordan Times, 3/28/03 BAGHDAD (AFP) — The Iraqi capital was pounded Thursday by one of the most intense waves of daylight air strikes since the US-led war began as coalition forces opened up a new front in their campaign. As the war entered its second week, up to 1,000 US elite troops parachuted into Kurdish-held northern Iraq, circumventing Turkey's refusal to allow US troops to invade from its soil. US and British air raids pummelled the capital throughout the day, with strikes focused on the southern edge of the city, home to a huge military camp repeatedly targeted by coalition forces. Further south, US-led ground forces including heavy tanks and artillery from the Marines and the 3rd Infantry Division moved into position for what is expected to be a full-scale attack on Baghdad in the days ahead. US President George W. Bush said "slowly but surely, the grip of terror around the throats of the Iraqi people is being loosened.” Speaking after a meeting at Camp David with his main ally in the war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush said the military campaign will last "however long it takes to win, however long it takes to achieve our objectives." Bush warned, however, the hardest part was still to come. "We're now engaging the dictator's most hardened and most desperate units. The campaign ahead will demand further courage and require further sacrifice. "Yet, we know the outcome. Iraq will be disarmed, the Iraqi regime will be ended and the long-suffering Iraqi people will be free," Bush said. Blair said swift progress had been achieved. "In less than a week, we have secured the southern oil fields and facilities and so protected that resource and wealth for the Iraqi people and avoided ecological disaster. "Our forces are now within 50 miles (80 kilometres) of Baghdad," he said. Iraqi Health Minister Umid Medhat Mubarak said some 350 civilians — mostly women, children and the elderly — had been killed and at least 3,600 injured in the first week of bombing. He accused the United States of using cluster bombs against civilians in Baghdad and in Basra, Iraq's second city. But a senior US commander, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, said a missile strike on a residential Baghdad neighbourhood which killed 14 people may have been the result of misdirected Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, or even a deliberate attack by the Iraqi military. "We think it's entirely possible that this may have been in fact an Iraqi missile that went up and came down or, given the behaviour of the regime lately, it may have been a deliberate attack," Brooks told a briefing at central command in Qatar. The coalition appeared to be working fast to build on the opening of a new front, after up to 1,000 troops from the US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade parachuted in darkness into an airfield some 75 kilometres northeast of Erbil, the main city in the Kurdish-held enclave. Iraq claimed it had shot more than 50 missiles at the parachuting troops, without saying if it had caused any casualties. The US troops established a base through which to bring in more soldiers and tanks, Pentagon officials said. "It's the first sizeable force in northern Iraq," a US defence official said. US transport planes were seen landing nearby and US troops were spotted deploying near the Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk. Hours after the troops parachuted in, Kurdish militia seized an abandoned Iraqi position guarding the approach to Kirkuk after Iraqi troops apparently abandoned their position. In central Iraq, US and British forces heading for Baghdad braced for a tough battle in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, 150 kilometres south of the capital, after meeting stiff resistance from Iraqi fighters. Iraq denied claims that US forces had killed about 1,000 Iraqis in three days of intense clashes in and around Najaf, with an armed forces spokesman calling it "baseless." Major John Altman, intelligence officer of the Third Infantry Division's First Brigade, told AFP the Iraqis were trying to reinforce Najaf with thousands of crack Republican Guard troops from Karbala, 70 kilometres north. In the central Iraqi desert, the sandstorms that have plagued the allies subsided and clear skies were forecast for the next two days. Units of the Marines' First Division pushed north towards Baghdad past the city of Diwaniya, some 240 kilometres from the capital, after two days of fierce fighting. Another marine unit from the east broke free of Iraqi resistance between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and moved to within 230 kilometres of the capital. The 101st Airborne Division's fleet of 270 attack helicopters prepared to take part in combat missions after being grounded by the swirling dust, officers said. However US forces in southern Iraq suffered a setback when dozens of marines were wounded in a "friendly fire incident" during a nighttime Iraqi attack near the town of Nassiriyah, a key crossing point over the Euphrates River. Shell and mortar fire apparently hit the marine command post headquarters near Nassiriyah, leaving 37 wounded, with three in critical condition, officers told an AFP correspondent with the troops. "It was friendly fire," said one US captain. But Iraq insisted it had inflicted the damage. The situation around the southern city of Basra, which is ringed by British troops amid reports of a local uprising, remained confused. British forces said they destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks that had broken out of the city, which is home to 1.2 million people. Earlier, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, the commander of British forces in the Gulf, said that tank movements did not suggest a coordinated counter-attack by Iraqi troops. Basra is a key gateway for humanitarian aid, but the fighting has disrupted efforts to deliver much-needed supplies and the International Committee of the Red Cross said the availability of clean drinking water remained "precarious" in Basra, a day after announcing it had restored water to half of the besieged city. Further south, the discovery of more sea mines in the deep-water port of Umm Qasr delayed the first shipment of British aid into Iraq, a British officer said. Antiwar demonstrations raged on, with 100,000 protesters marching through the Yemeni capital Sanaa and 10,000 in the northern Egyptian city of Zagazig.
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