14 April 2003
U.S. Forces Take Tikrit With Little Resistance
(Central Command Report, April 14: Iraq Operational Update) (560) Washington -- U.S. Marines took the attack into Tikrit, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's ancestral hometown, isolating it from the west, south and north and controlling a key bridge that crosses the Tigris River in the center of the town, says a U.S. Central Command briefing officer. "This morning [April 14] the attack entered Tikrit, securing the presidential palace there and also beginning the search for any remaining regime supporters," Army Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said at the daily CENTCOM media briefing. It also marked the only significant combat action in Iraq within the past 24 hours, he said. Brooks, the CENTCOM deputy operations director, said the ground forces command had sent a Marine unit to Tikrit from Baghdad within the past 24 hours, but that it met little resistance in the town of Ba'qubah on the east side of the Tigris River or in Samarra. "Elsewhere, coalition land forces are actively engaged in setting the conditions for a stable Iraq," Brooks said. "Among the challenges are disposing of all the material of war purchased and stored by the regime for use in the defense of Baghdad. "As coalition forces move to secure more power stations, water facilities and hospitals in several zones of the city, they often uncover or are guided to significant amounts of ammunition, weapons, aircraft, and vehicles used by the regime," he said. However, Brooks also noted that the coalition force is still a liberating force and has not become an occupying power under the terms of the Geneva Conventions. "While there may be a number of similarities to what the Geneva Conventions describe, that's not a category that we have stated publicly at this point. Whether that changes over time needs to be seen," Brooks said. Meanwhile, Brooks said the coalition is working and contributing significant assets to restore vital functions and to distribute aid in Baghdad. He said efforts are currently under way to help the Iraqis restore electricity and water service that ended when Baghdad was still under regime control. "The land component has organized several engineer teams to assess and facilitate restoration of services throughout the country," Brooks said. He also noted that Iraqi citizens are becoming increasingly active in most areas of the country in helping to restore order and restore services. In Basrah, joint patrols have begun and roughly 200 Iraqi police volunteers have joined with coalition forces to start patrolling the city, he said. "We continue our efforts to reestablish reliable medical care throughout Iraq," he said. "First, several hospitals have been secured by coalition operations recently, and as we go to those locations and we find patients that require care that cannot be adequately provided at some of these facilities, the patients are either transferred to other Iraqi hospitals, or moved to military medical facilities." Brooks said the Iraqi people in many communities have been alerting coalition forces to the presence of pockets of non-Iraqi volunteers who entered the country to support the regime. "In many cases they notify us where they think there may be pockets, where weapons may be stored, where there may be some untoward activity, or where disruption and threats may occur," he said. (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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