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Friday, March 28, 2003
US: Attack on Iraq could take months
BAGHDAD—US-led forces closed in on Baghdad yesterday, with a new front opened in the north and reinforcements sent to the south, but senior US military officials admitted the war in Iraq could last months and require more troops.
Bad weather, dangerously long supply lines and a recalcitrant enemy “has led to a broad reassessment by some top generals of US military expectations and timelines,” the Washington Post reported, as the war to oust President Saddam Hussein entered its second week.
Coalition efforts to ship aid into Iraq were shelved after the discovery of mines in the country’s only deep-water port, even as a top US official warned the Iraqi people had just one month of food supplies.
As for the rest of the world, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned a bogged-down war will hit recovering world financial markets hard “and reinforce the headwinds against global economic recovery.”
“Uncertainty could also persist despite a short and decisive military conflict owing to the potential for continued geopolitical instability and tangible threats of terrorism,” the IMF said.
Coalition warplanes unleashed a fresh wave of air strikes on the Iraqi capital Baghdad overnight and early yesterday, ahead of an expected decisive battle for the city.
Friendly fire
Although dozens of US marines were wounded in a “friendly fire” clash near the southern town of Nasiriyah, the coalition’s progress became easier as blinding sandstorms that had slowed troop movements for two days cleared up.
The coalition opened a new front in northern Iraq after up to 1,000 elite US airborne troops parachuted into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq late Wednesday, circumventing Turkey’s refusal to allow US troops to cross its soil.
“We are increasing the number of forces in the country every day,” said US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We’re increasing them in the north, we’re increasing them in the south, we’re increasing them in the west.”
Some 12,000 troops from the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division, initially due to enter Iraq through Turkey, left their Texas base yesterday for key port of Umm Qasr on the Kuwaiti border and crossed the Euphrates River at Nasiriyah to press northwards toward the scene of the battle at Najaf.
Two British troops were killed and two severely wounded in a friendly fire incident between two of the British army’s high-tech Challenger II tanks in fighting outside Basra, British officials said.
Twenty British servicemen have now been killed in war accidents and combat. There are 16 American dead but several are missing and seven are believed held prisoner.
The battle for Baghdad appears to be nearing a critical phase, with US troops backed by Apache helicopter gunships primed for an all-out assault on the Republican Guard.
US officers said 30 to 40 Apaches, the US military’s most fearsome attack helicopter, had made initial runs against Saddam’s crack troops.
The US Third Infantry Division was closest to Baghdad, positioned near Kerbala, about 100 kilometers from the capital, field reports said, with the US 101st Airborne Division crawling up from the southwest and the Marines to the east.
Their advance through the desert was slowed by strong winds and swirling sand.
Trouble ahead
A blizzard of choking dust kept the 101st Airborne Division’s fleet of more than 270 attack helicopters out of the battle for Iraq for the second day Wednesday.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned the war was “much closer to the beginning than the end.”
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, also insisted that “the toughest fight is ahead of us” and the resistance will get stronger as troops approach Baghdad.
A pilot aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier said a “terrorist al-Qaeda camp” in northern Iraq was bombed by US warplanes early Wednesday.
Iraq’s northern city of Mosul was also hit by air strikes early yesterday, after the oil capital of Kirkuk was targeted Tuesday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to head to Washington to discuss the progress of the war with US President George W. Bush later yesterday. (AFP)
(March 28, 2003 issue)
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