The Jerusalem Post March 28, 2003
US paratroops open northern front
*Attacks resume after sandstorm passes
*Blair: Western launch threat eliminated
By Janine Zacharia And AP
ABOARD USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN - Strike fighters from this aircraft carrier bombed ground targets, troop concentrations, and surface-to-air missile sites as some 1,000 soldiers from the US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade parachuted into northern Iraq and secured an airfield there.
All hits were successful, the pilots told reporters after returning from their six-hour mission.
"We were in support of them, out in front of them, protecting them from any troop concentrations," one F/A-18 Hornet pilot said.
US military planners had hoped to open a northern front sooner. But Turkey's refusal to allow ground troops to transit there made that impossible. The Theodore Roosevelt's planes have been carrying out close-air support missions nightly in support of ground troops in northern Iraq. They have also bombed several targets, including a Republican Guard complex and one of Saddam Hussein's palaces on the Euphrates River.
Coalition forces flew more than 600 bombing sorties over Iraq on Thursday, stepping up the air campaign that had slowed because of bad weather, defense officials said. They were hitting Republican Guard formations around Baghdad.
Strong explosions shook central Baghdad late Thursday, and buildings close to the Information Ministry appeared to have been hit.
Witnesses also said a housing complex for employees of a weapons-producing facility about 20 kilometers south of Baghdad was targeted in an attack, and that an unknown number of people were killed and wounded.
Iraqi officials put the civilian casualty toll at 4,000, including 350 killed.
Skies were clear over Baghdad after one of the worst sandstorms in memory.
US officials said the improved weather conditions would allow massive attacks to resume.
Israel is staying on high alert despite a British reassurance that coalition forces have disabled Saddam's ability to launch missiles from western Iraq, a government official said.
"We have disabled Iraq's ability to launch external aggression from the west," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a joint news conference with US President George W. Bush.
Israel will stay on high alert until the "threat of missiles or other attacks is removed completely," said the official. "There's still a possibility outside of western Iraq."
Bush, meeting with Blair at Camp David, said the coalition will fight in Iraq "however long it takes to win." He said he was "not surprised" that Iraqi forces have committed potential war crimes against coalition forces "because that is the nature of Saddam's regime."
Blair declared that "Saddam Hussein and his hateful regime will be removed from power."
The leaders asked the UN to restart its oil-for-food program, which fed about 60 percent of Iraq's 22 million people until war shut off the flow.
Bush and Blair refused to put a timetable on war, mindful that stiffer-than-expected resistance in southern Iraq and the looming battle for Baghdad could test the patience of their constituents and increase anti-war sentiment across the globe.
The fighting will last "however long it takes to win," Bush said.
Iraqi Television reported that Saddam chaired a meeting of senior officials on Thursday night.
The meeting was attended by Saddam's son Qusay, who heads the elite Republican Guard, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, and Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, it said.
The broadcast showed Saddam wearing an army sweater over military fatigues but gave no details on the meeting.
In central Iraq, US forces moved closer to Baghdad on several routes; one of the army columns was 16 kilometers long. Battles with Iraqi troops flared in several areas, but troop movements overall were easier due to a break in the fierce sandstorms.
To the south, US Army troops and tanks fought off some Iraqi resistance, and British forces destroyed an Iraqi armored column outside the besieged city of Basra.
In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, about 48 kilometers south of the Turkish border, Kurdish militiamen and US special operations troops linked up with more than 1,000 US Army paratroopers Thursday to secure the area around a strategic air strip. Cargo planes flew in supplies for coalition forces eyeing a new front north of Baghdad.
The airdrop overnight Wednesday marked the first large deployment of US ground troops in the region.
"This tightens the noose against Saddam's forces battling coalition forces to the south," said Brig.-Gen. James Parker, commander of US forces in the North. "And it may also serve as a warning to Turkish forces."
At a news briefing in Qatar, US Brig.-Gen. Vincent Brooks said that it is possible an Iraqi missile was responsible for the marketplace explosion a day earlier that killed 15 civilians. He said Iraq has been using old missile stock fired with guidance systems turned off.
"We think it is entirely possible that this may have been an Iraqi missile that went up and came down," he said.
He said the US had an air mission in the area, but not in the neighborhood that was devastated by the explosion.
Coalition field commanders said Iraqi paramilitary forces were seizing children and threatening Iraqi men with execution if they didn't fight for the regime, US Central Command spokesman Jim Wilkinson said.
In a-Nasiriya, in the South, US marines were reported to have fought house-to-house battles. A reporter for WTVD in Durham, North Carolina, attached to the Camp Lejeune Marines, said at least 25 marines had been wounded.
Earlier news reports said more than 30 US marines were wounded, two seriously, in an accidental exchange of fire between American units. The US Central Command said it had no information on those reports.
GRAPHIC: Map: The Battle for Bagdad (Credit: Ministry Of Defense, Globalsecurity.Org; Jane'S Information Group; Graphic News)
Copyright © 2003, The Jerusalem Post
