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U.S. Forces Turn the Screw on Blitzed Baghdad

Tuesday, April 8, 2003
(2:19 PM ET)
By Hassan Hafidh
Reuters Writer

"We will move as quickly as possible to place governmental responsibilities under the control of an interim authority composed of Iraqis from both inside and outside the country," Bush said after the summit in Northern Ireland. "The interim authority will serve until a permanent government can be chosen by the Iraqi people."

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Reuters
U.S. forces tightened their hold on central Baghdad on Tuesday, advancing street by street and blitzing targets with planes and tanks as Iraqi defenders fought an unequal battle with anti-tank weapons and assault rifles.

Consolidating the U.S. stranglehold on the city of five million people, Marines captured the Rashid airbase in the southeast, three miles from the center.

The U.S. military said it did not know whether an air strike on a building in a wealthy district of Baghdad on Monday evening had killed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but added his grasp on the nation of 26 million was fast disintegrating.

"We're not sure exactly who's in charge at this particular point in time," U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks declared.

Aircraft, tanks and artillery pounded the nerve center of Saddam's administration in a thundering raid in central Baghdad that began at dawn, meeting only scattered Iraqi resistance in what appeared to be the final battle for Saddam's capital.

"It's raining bombs," said Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul. "They're targeting the same area over and over. The place is shaking and there's smoke rising," she said from the Palestine Hotel, where most foreign media are based.

Later a U.S. tank fired into the hotel, killing Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 television. Nakhoul and two other Reuters journalists were wounded.

A U.S. general said the tank had fired a single round to silence small arms and grenade fire from the hotel. Journalists said they had heard no such firing in the vicinity of the hotel.

Al-Jazeera reporter-producer Tarek Ayoub, a Jordanian, was killed during a U.S. air raid, the Arab satellite television said. Another crew member, Zohair al-Iraqi, was hurt when Jazeera's office near the Information Ministry was hit.

* "EXPANDING PRESENCE"
* POSTWAR IRAQ
* NO WORD ON SADDAM
(More: Reuters.com)
2003 © Reuters, Ltd.

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FOCUS: IRAQ
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