Marines push north to Baghdad in ‘seek and destroy’ missions

THOUSANDS of Marines pushed north toward Baghdad in “seek and destroy” missions yesterday, trying to open the route to the Iraqi capital and stop days of attacks along a stretch that has become known as “Ambush Alley.”

Charging into previously unsecured areas, the Marines tried to provoke attacks in order to find Iraqi fighters and defeat them. A chaplain travelling with them handed out humanitarian packages to distrustful Iraqi civilians encountered along the way.

Army supply trucks appeared on the Marine route north for the first time yesterday, supporting field reports that Army and Marine forces were meeting for the first time in the ground invasion, which had the Marines trekking north along Route 80 known as the "Highway of Death" and Army forces punching their way across desert terrain.

Rank-and-file Marines, ordered to intercept and question each civilian they see along the route after an Iraqi army officer attacked a group of Americans in a suicide bomb attack Saturday, also handed out ration packets.

For hungry Iraqis, this was the only thing that could convince them the Marines were not there to hurt them.

"I had one of them tell me they'd heard to be a Marine you had to eat a baby, or kill someone," one Marine about enemy prisoners of war.

Frightened Iraqis scrambled into their homes at the sight of the Americans, Marines said. One old woman clutched her mule with one hand and smacked her dogs forward with the other, trying to get them to attack the approaching American soldiers. Like many other exchanges, that encounter ended with smiles and gratitude for the rations.

Elsewhere, the US Central Command, which oversees the war in Iraq, said coalition warplanes hit a series of targets in the Iraqi capital overnight into yesterday morning. In a "key strike," coalition aircraft bombed the eastern Baghdad barracks of the main training facility of the Iraqi paramilitary forces.

With advancing ground forces expecting a showdown with Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard in the final 50-mile march to Baghdad, the coalition sought to hobble Iraqi forces by striking a fuel depot in the holy Shi'ite city of Karbala.

"While the army is not moving forward, it is the turn of the air to shape the battle space," said Wing Commander Andy Suddards, the British pilot who led the attack. "If the tanks have no fuel, it is all going to help."

Coalition warplanes also struck surface-to-air missile batteries in eastern Baghdad, as well as the Abu Garayb presidential palace, just east of Baghdad's international airport, and two facilities at the Karada intelligence complex, on the banks of the Tigris River, Central Command said.