Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=4/4/03

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-301750

TITLE=IRAQ WRAP OVERNIGHT (L-ONLY)

BYLINE=ROGER WILKISON

DATELINE=DOHA

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: U-S troops have occupied most of Baghdad's international airport and are continuing to advance on Saddam Hussein's seat of power. But, as V-O-A's Roger Wilkison reports from coalition headquarters in Qatar, it is still unclear how soon a full scale offensive on the Iraqi capital would be launched.

TEXT: Troops of the U-S Army's Third Infantry Division have seized control of most of Baghdad's main airport, although some buildings still have to be cleared of pockets of resistance.

The U-S military says the capture of the strategic asset followed a night of fighting in which hundreds of Iraqi troops were killed. The airport is fewer than 20 kilometers from downtown Baghdad.

V-O-A correspondent Alysha Ryu, who is traveling with U-S forces as they near the Iraqi capital, reported overnight that U-S troops made rapid progress in their drive toward the airport.

/// RYU ACT (FROM Q&a WITH BRUMMETT)///

I think that probably the momentum change has come in the sense that the harassment type of attacks that have come on U-S forces last week by the paramilitary and those kinds of elements are decreasing, if not abating quite a bit.

/// END ACTUALITY ///

Capturing the airport puts Baghdad itself within the range of U-S artillery. It will also allow allied troops and materiel to be flown in near the front, greatly relieving existing supply lines that stretch all the way back to Kuwait. Those supply lines have been under sporadic attack by Iraqi militiamen.

A British spokesman at coalition headquarters in Qatar, Group Captain Al Lockwood of the Royal Air Force, says the airport is a big strategic prize for the coalition.

/// LOCKWOOD ACTUALITY ///

It's a great strategic asset, four miles by two miles, large area of land, good runways, good facilities, gives us a lot of flexibility of options to use that piece of space for future operations.

/// END ACTUALITY ///

In moving into the airport, U-S forces say they killed more than 300 Iraqi soldiers and captured or destroyed dozens of Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery, troop carriers and trucks.

U-S troops later fought off an Iraqi counterattack, knocking out five Iraqi tanks.

Despite the capture of the airport, V-O-A's Alysha Ryu reports from her vantage point with U-S forces, that the real battle for Baghdad lies ahead.

/// RYU ACTUALITY TWO ( from Q&A WITH BRUMMETT) ///

The airport is on the outskirts of Baghdad, and there is a tremendous way to go in terms of seizing the city itself. And, so this fight is not over by any stretch of the imagination.

///END ACTUALITY///

The Iraqi military warned that Baghdad would, in its words, swallow whole any invading forces. On Iraqi television Friday, Iraq's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, continued to speak defiantly, but acknowledged that coalition forces are on the edge of Baghdad. He was reading a statement issued in the name of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whose location and physical condition have not been independently verified since the start of the war two weeks ago.

Most Baghdad residents were not able to see the broadcast, because power was cut in the city Thursday night.

Coalition warplanes continued to bomb Baghdad overnight, targeting presidential palaces and the headquarters of the Iraqi air force.

Meanwhile, U-S Marines have begun tightening their grip on the southern town of Nasiriyah, breaking the resistance of Iraqi irregular forces which had exercised control there over the past week and persistently harassed coalition supply lines. (signed)

NEB/RW/AWP/RH