March 24, 2003	Monday	Muharram 20, 1424

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NASIRIYAH, Iraq, March 23: US forces moved past stiff resistance on Sunday in southern Iraq, reportedly suffering heavy losses in this Euphrates river town, to close in on Baghdad from two directions.

Field reports said US Marines were racing towards the capital from the southeast, with US Army infantry to the west surging past Najaf, about 160 kilometres outside Baghdad.

US commanders expressed satisfaction with their forces’ progress as they continued to bomb Baghdad and prepared to open a northern front in the drive to oust President Saddam Hussein.

But the going on the ground on the war’s fourth day was tougher than expected.

US troops skirted Nasiriyah, a key river crossing point, after using Cobra and other attack helicopters and artillery against stubborn Iraqi forces with tanks, a photographer said.

Thick columns of black smoke rose from the city, the photographer said, and half a dozen gutted Iraqi tanks were seen at the entrance.

The BBC quoted US sources as reporting four American dead and 50 wounded in the battle it said pitted 5,000 Marines against some 500 Iraqi defenders for the main route through Nasiriyah.

The Al-Jazeera television network showed at least five charred and bloodied bodies of US soldiers reportedly killed at Nasiriyah. Also shown were five prisoners, including two wounded.

The Iraqi military said in a statement that 25 US and British troops had been killed around Nasiriyah, along with “a large number wounded and others taken prisoner.” There was no independent confirmation.

US officials said a handful of US troops — “less than 10” — had been reported missing. They confirmed some had been captured.

Fighting continued outside the southern port of Basra as Britain’s vaunted Desert Rats faced fierce opposition from Iraqi forces with rocket-propelled grenades, artillery, mortars and machine guns.

Correspondents travelling with the troops outside Basra said they found a massive, abandoned Iraqi arsenal of cruise missiles and warheads hidden inside fortified bunkers.

Iraqi soldiers also fought on for a fourth day Sunday at the strategic southern outpost of Umm Qasr despite the firepower of US and British marines supported by tanks and attack helicopters.

The unexpected opposition came from Iraqi army regulars who have no real loyalty to Saddam and were expected to be pushovers. But the US forces still made good time in their march through the desert.

A correspondent travelling with the army’s Third Division said the lead elements had reached an area between Najaf and Karbala, both major Shiite centres.

The infantrymen were backed by air power, including A-10 Thunderbolt “tankbusters” that destroyed 27 vehicles in a burst of firepower on Sunday, according to army officers.

Colonel Will Grimsley, of the division’s First Brigade, said 30-40 Iraqis were killed and 200 taken prisoner near Najaf.

The troops moving up from Kuwait, including the US Marines First Expeditionary Force that kicked off a 72-hour dash north, were eager to avoid nasty house-to-house combat in the cities. They edged on Sunday around the key Euphrates river passageway of Nasiriyah where Iraqi forces had put up a fight that prompted US commanders to call in artillery and Cobra attack helicopters.

US-British forces also tried to negotiate the surrender of the port of Basra, Iraq’s second city which commanders have vowed not to enter.

“We won’t be going into cities, the last thing we need now is a new Somalia,” one Marine officer said, referring to the fierce urban warfare encountered by US forces in Mogadishu nearly a decade ago.

Iraqi officials said cluster bombs dropped by US and British war planes on Basra had left 77 civilians dead and 366 others wounded. There was no independent verification.

The United States had been frustrated in its bid to open a northern front in the war by the refusal of the Turkish parliament to allow US troops to transit through its territory.

But a senior Kurdish official said on Sunday that US special forces teams had begun flying into Iraqi Kurdistan to help battle an alleged Al Qaeda-linked group and put pressure on Baghdad from the north.

As ground forces slogged toward Baghdad, allied air units kept up a forbidding aerial assault on the capital where one of the main targets has been the elusive Saddam, whose whereabouts US officials acknowledge remain a mystery.

State television showed a smiling Saddam in military uniform meeting a war council of his top advisers and reported that his troops were fending off US and British ground forces in southern Iraq with “resistance and heroism.” The coalition forces suffered a new setback in the air as a Royal Air Force plane was reported missing after it was hit by a US Patriot missile.

British officials said the plane shot down was a Tornado, a fighter-bomber with a crew of two that was missing after the third air accident in three days. Nineteen servicemen were killed in helicopter crashes on Friday and Saturday.—AFP