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62 Iraqis, 4 US soldiers killed while US air raids continues JT, 3/30/03
BAGHDAD (AFP) — Four US soldiers died Saturday in the first suicide bombing against coalition troops in the Iraqi war, as US President George W. Bush claimed that President Saddam Hussein's regime now controls only "a small portion" of the country although fighting remained fierce. Coalition war planes pounded the Iraqi capital Baghdad, causing heavy casualties — 62 dead according to official figures — but despite Bush's upbeat address there were other more downbeat progress reports on the coalition's 10-day offensive. Amid reports that the ground assault on the Iraqi capital had been put on hold due to the dogged Iraqi resistance, coalition forces were regrouping in the central and southern Iraqi desert and shoring up supply lines. The suicide bombing presented a fresh problem for the invading forces amid US complaints of "dirty tactics," amounting to "war crimes," employed by the Iraqi resistance. Four US soldiers were killed when a taxi driver blew up his vehicle at a checkpoint north of the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf, some 150 kilometres from the capital, a US military spokesman said in Qatar. An earlier report had put the toll at five servicemen killed. The suicide bomber was an Iraqi army officer seeking to teach American troops a "lesson," Iraqi state television reported. After the attack, Iraq's chief Muslim cleric issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling on the people to wage holy war and fight against the US and British forces that have invaded Iraq. President Bush voiced confidence, saying the coalition forces were "now fighting the most desperate units of the dictator's army. "The fighting is fierce and we do not know its duration, yet we know the outcome of this battle: The Iraqi regime will be disarmed and removed from power. Iraq will be free," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Thanks to our fighting forces, the regime that once terrorised all of Iraq now controls a small portion of that country. American and coalition troops have continued a steady advance, and are now less than 50 miles (75 kilometres) from Baghdad," he added The massive air raids in Baghdad have reached a new intensity as the US and Britain acknowledged that hopes are fading of a quick victory in the war. Waves of massive explosions rocked the city centre and its outskirts, especially the southern edge, with one missile crashing into the information ministry. The building was gutted, but no one was reported injured in the attack. Meanwhile, a multiforce allied air attack on a crack unit of Iraq's Republican Guard near the holy Shiite city of Karbala killed at least 55 Iraqi soldiers and destroyed more than 25 vehicles, US military officials claimed. Two battalions of Apache helicopters from the 101st Airborne's Aviation Brigade struck 40 targets of the Republican Guard's Medina Division during the attack late Friday, Major Hugh Cate told AFP. "We completely destroyed 25 vehicles — tanks, armoured personnel carriers and trucks," Cate, the 101st's public affairs officer, said. Bush and his top aides vigorously defended their war strategy after a senior US field commander gave a downbeat progress report. "The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against," Lieutenant General William Wallace told the Washington Post from the 101st Airborne Division's headquarters in central Iraq, adding that the war could drag on much longer than originally predicted. However US Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, praised the broad battle plan as "brilliant." A British military spokesman played down reports of a pause in the ground campaign, calling the reorganisation of ground forces "purely a case of shaping the battlefield." The Iraqi capital was still reeling from repeated bombing raids on Friday, one of which struck a busy market, killing at least 60 in the largest single loss of civilian life since the outbreak of war. A US military spokesman at the command headquarters in Qatar said the matter was under investigation. In another reminder of strong Iraqi resistance, the bodies of the first British servicemen to die in the US-British war on Iraq were flown home on Saturday. As antiwar demonstrations were kicking off across the country, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's second son, attended a ceremony to mark the return of ten dead soldiers at a Royal Air Force base in Brize Norton, west England. According to official figures, 23 British soldiers have been killed in total since the start of the war on March 20 — 14 in helicopter accidents, four in combat, and five as a result of “friendly fire.” The Pentagon said 34 US soldiers had been killed so far during the campaign, with another 104 wounded, 15 missing and seven taken prisoner. Protests against the war also took place elsewhere. Some 15,000 protesters turned out in Paris according to police, while organisers put the figure at 50,000. Tens of thousands were expected to turn out in similar rallies in cities across Europe. Villagers in southeastern Turkey pelted a team of US experts with eggs and stones when they turned up to investigate the crash of a cruise missile, fired at Iraq, but which landed in Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported. Thousands of demonstrators marched on the US consulate in South Africa's Cape Town to protest against the war in Iraq, burning US flags and chanting anti-American slogans. In Kuwait, an Iraqi Silkworm missile hit the capital Kuwait city for the first time, crashing into the water near the country's largest and most popular shopping mall, causing extensive material damage but only two minor injuries. Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdish rebels were consolidating their new positions outside the northern oil city of Kirkuk Saturday, with Iraqi government forces keeping up sporadic artillery and rocket fire. On the diplomatic front French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Saturday they wished to "work together closely" on postwar Iraq, Chirac's office said. The message came during a telephone call Blair made to Chirac, during which the two leaders also agreed on "the importance of the role that should be given to the United Nations after the war," the French president's office said. The UN also adopted a resolution allowing the resumption under sole UN authority of humanitarian aid for Iraq through its "oil-for-food" programme, suspended at the start of the war. But Iraq on Saturday rejected the move, with Sahhaf saying the programme could not go forward without Baghdad's consent. The coalition's effort to bring drinking water and food supplies to the Iraqi people began Saturday in the southern port of Umm Qasr, where Iraqis crowded around a water tanker that arrived from Kuwait aboard a British ship.
Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.
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