Steve Quayle News Alerts

March 28, 2003

Massive Bombing Takes Out Telecommunications Structures
Massive coalition bombing campaigns continuing into Friday morning took out telecommunications structures as U.S.-led forces tried to cut off Saddam Hussein from his military and civilians.

The attack gutted a seven-story telephone exchange building in an area called Al-Alwya, leaving the street strewn with slabs of concrete, irons rods and corrugated metal.

Husein Moeini, telecommunications director of Baghdad, said he believed people were buried beneath the rubble, but journalists who arrived at the scene less than three hours after it was hit did not see a rescue operation under way.

Thunderous explosions rocked Baghdad on Friday and a towering column of churning orange smoke rose over the skyline after a break in the weather opened the way for the mightiest bombardment of the Iraqi capital in days.

British officers reported Friday that a few thousand Iraqi civilians tried to flee Basra, which is encircled by British troops, but were chased back into the city by mortar and machine gun fire from Iraqi paramilitary forces.

British officers said soldiers from the 1st Black Watch battalion, in Warrior armored fighting vehicles, were trying to wedge themselves between the militia fire and the targeted civilians.

"Our interpretation of this is here perhaps are the first pieces of evidence of Iraqi people trying to break free from the Baath party regime and the militia," Col. Chris Vernon, a spokesman in southern Iraq for British forces, told Sky News Television. "And clearly the militia don't want that. They want to keep their population in there, and they fired on them to force them back in."

During a massive bombardment of Baghdad that stretched into early Friday, allied forces targeted one of Saddam's presidential compounds, command and control facilities and a communications center.

"Coalition air forces and Tomahawk missiles took out a communications and command and control facilities in the capital city during the night," said Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said at Camp As Sayliyah.

"Here perhaps are the first pieces of evidence of Iraqi people trying to break free... and clearly the militia don't want that," Vernon said.

Iraq's satellite television channel has been cutting in and out since the overnight attacks, which marked one of the heaviest bombing days of the war in Iraq.

A U.S. B-2 bomber dropped two 4,700-pound, satellite-guided "bunker busting" bombs on a major communications tower on the east bank of the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad. U.S. military officials said the strike was meant to hamper communications between Saddam's regime and Iraq's military.

The bombing, which started shortly after 11 p.m. Thursday, also targeted positions of the Republican Guard in a ring outside the city.

The possibility of chemical weapons surfaced again Thursday as well, as a woman believed to be one of the Iraqi regime's top biological weapons scientists was seen in a televised meeting with President Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials said. It is not yet known, however, when that taped meeting took place.

Saddam Still in Control?

The new bombing in Baghdad came as sources told Fox News that U.S. government officials have all but concluded that Saddam remains in control of his military and is preparing for the battle of Baghdad.

Saddam is believed to be issuing orders as he moves from one underground bunker to the next.

U.S. officials began sending reinforcements to the region and reported 25 Marines wounded after a friendly fire incident around Nasiriyah.

The Iraqi regime breathed defiance even as coalition troops encircled its capital city. "The enemy must come inside Baghdad, and that will be its grave," said Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested that U.S. forces might lay siege to the capital and hope Iraqis rise up against the government.

President Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Thursday declined to set a timetable for the war. It will last "however long it takes" to win, he said, thumping the lectern for emphasis.

Both men said the United Nations could help rebuild postwar Iraq, but sidestepped tricky questions of who would create and run a new government once Saddam is toppled.

In the War Zone

On the battlefield, the coalition reported flying 1,500 missions Thursday as they exploited their unchecked air superiority. British forces reported destroying 14 Iraqi tanks near Basra -- their largest such take since World War II.

Warplanes bombed positions in northern Iraq near Kurdish-held areas and hit Republican Guard forces menacing American ground forces 50 miles south of Baghdad. Thunderous explosions rocked the capital after nightfall in one of the strongest blasts in days.

Combat aircraft dropped bombs "just about as fast as we can load them," said Capt. Thomas A. Parker, aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in the Persian Gulf.

Cargo planes flew military supplies into northern Iraq after 1,000 American airborne troops parachuted in to secure an airfield. One source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said additional personnel were being flown in, and that an early objective would be securing the northern oil fields near Kirkuk. Invading forces took control of southern Iraqi oil fields in the early hours of the ground war.

Several miles away, Kurdish militiamen and villagers celebrated the fall during the day of a hilltop position where Iraqi forces had menaced civilians for years.

U.S. forces had pounded the northern hills around Chamchamal over the past several days, and it appeared that the Iraqis abandoned their checkpoint and bunkers and retreated to the west.

In central Iraq, the first resupply plane landed on a restored runway at Tallil Airfield -- hastily renamed "Bush International Airport" by American forces who had secured it.

Still, Iraqi resistance continued to slow the drive on the capital and kept coalition forces out of key cities such as Basra and Nasiriyah. Its mines kept ships with humanitarian assistance from unloading their cargo at the southern port city of Umm Qasr.

After eight days of fighting, Pentagon officials said close to 90,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq, and that an additional 100,000 to 120,000 were on the way. All were part of a military blueprint made up long ago, officials said, sensitive to criticism that commanders had underestimated the need for troops to quell stronger-than-expected resistance or protect long supply lines.

Fox News learned Thursday night that a contingent of some 2,000 Marines was shifted from anti-terrorism duty in the Gulf of Aden to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Nasiriyah is one of the southern Iraq cities where irregular forces have put up far more resistance than American military planners expected. U.S. officials said some or all of a group of 25 Marines were hurt when one U.S. unit mistakenly fired on another.

Brooks said the battle lasted 90 minutes, and WTVD-TV of Durham, N.C., which has a reporter with the Marines there, reported the Marines had been wounded during fierce house-to-house fighting.

To the south, British forces continued efforts to gain control over Basra, but die-hard defenders of Saddam's regime have held positions inside the city amid reports of clashes with the local population.

Iraqis accused allied forces of targeting civilians. They, in turn, were accused of seizing Iraqi children to force their fathers into battle.

"They are targeting the human beings in Iraq to decrease their morale," Iraqi Health Minister Omeed Medhat Mubarak told reporters. Officials said about 350 civilians had been killed in the operation, and more than 3,500 others injured.

Fox News' Carl Cameron and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,82382,00.html