US tanks attack Saddam stronghold

US TROOPS yesterday launched a battle for Saddam Hussein’s last stronghold of Tikrit, with hundreds of tanks said to be attacking the northern city despite a surrender offer by tribal leaders.

As witnesses reported the sounds of fierce fighting from the outskirts of Tikrit, a spokesman for the US Central Command (Centcom) in Qatar, said:

“We have forces in Tikrit. We are actively engaging any forces we need to.”

Asked to describe the fighting, he said it was spotty but added that “when you are engaged in a firefight it is always fierce”.

He said Task Force Tripoli, made up of members of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, was involved in the fighting in and around Tikrit.

About 250 US armoured vehicles had entered the city and Brig Gen John Kelly said five Iraqi tanks had been destroyed on the outskirts and at least 15 people killed in firefights, Canadian journalist Matthew Fisher, embedded with the marines, told CNN.

The US assault apparently ignored an appeal from 22 Tikrit tribal leaders for an end to coalition bombardment of Tikrit so a peaceful surrender of pro-Saddam militia there could be negotiated.

“We are ready to surrender, but let them stop their bombardments. After that we are asking for just two days to persuade the Fedayeen militia to lay down its arms,” Yussuf Abdul Aziz al-Nassari told AFP in company with a number of other tribal chiefs.

In Tikrit earlier yesterday no militia or Iraqi troops were seen in the city centre, just a number of armed residents who said they wanted to prevent the looting that has occurred in every Iraqi city abandoned to the coalition by forces loyal to Saddam.

The residents, carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades, said they would surrender to US forces if these were not accompanied by Iraqi opponents of Saddam’s regime, notably Shi’ites and Kurds.

Tikrit, Saddam’s traditional powerbase, lies about 180km north of Baghdad and is considered the last major city not under control of the coalition forces.

Tikrit and other parts of the north between Baghdad and Kirkuk, where remnants of Iraqi forces were resisting, are now the main target of coalition forces, said Centcom officials.

In Baghdad, US marines reported finding five canisters with a substance testing positive for chemical agents but backed off a claim of finding nearly 300 suspect artillery shells.

Officers with the marine’s 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment said the canisters were found on Saturday in a Baghdad schoolyard among large stocks of ammunition, but played down the earlier claim they had found likely blister agents in 278 shells.

In southern Iraq, coalition forces were engaged in mop-up operations, US Maj Rumi Nielson-Green said in Qatar. US marines entered al-Kut unopposed.

“They were assisted by contacts with local leaders,” added Capt Frank Thorp.

A tip-off from local Iraqis also led to US troops finding seven US soldiers thought to have been taken prisoner north of Baghdad earlier in the war, military commander Gen Tommy Franks said.

US forces, facing mounting anger among Baghdadis for failing to stem days of looting by rampaging youths since taking the capital on Wednesday, set up an operations centre to recruit Iraqi workers for key sectors.

In an ominous sign of possible violence still to come, US military officials said marines had uncovered 310 vests fitted for use by suicide bombers, with about half of them engineered with explosives.

But a US spokesman in Baghdad said that troops would start joint patrols at an unspecified date with Iraqi security forces in a bid to restore order to the capital hit by looting after the fall of the Baghdad regime.

Franks said that he may go to Baghdad this week to visit troops who were stationed there.