Republican Guard head for showdown with US Marines

A massive convoy of US Marines swept down the main road to Baghdad today amid reports that Iraq’s Republican Guard was moving reinforcements south for a showdown.

While some Marine units had been roughly following the River Tigris, the US Army was advancing to the west along the Euphrates, with some reports putting forward units within six miles of the Baghdad suburbs.

Relentless fire from 155mm howitzers rained on Iraqi positions near the town of Numaniyah as the Marine advance resumed.

Large black plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the town and its prized River Tigris crossing, taken by American troops yesterday.

In the night, US forces lost two aircraft – a single-seat Navy F/A-18 Hornet was hit by a surface-to-air missile and a Black Hawk helicopter was downed by small arms fire near Karbala city, 50 miles south of Baghdad.

Seven Americans died on the Black Hawk and four others were wounded and rescued.

The Marines were stopping every vehicle they met along the main road. Drivers and passengers got out of taxis and cars and stood by the road with their hands in the air.

Black combat boots were discarded along the road by Iraqi fighters who have taken off their military footwear and changed into robes, hoping to avoid capture as combatants.

At a Baath Party building flying Iraqi flags, a small group of men sat clustered in a grassy area around a woman dressed in a black chador and waving a white flag of surrender.

Many groups of Iraqis sat down by the roadside, waving and smiling to show they were not enemy fighters.

The Pentagon said Iraqi Republican Guard reinforcements had moved out of Baghdad towards the approaching Americans.

New groups of Saddam’s best trained and equipped fighters were dispatched to replace guard units shattered yesterday as US forces advanced towards the capital of five million people.

As the Marines closed on Baghdad from the south-east, the Army moved in from the south-west, meeting little resistance as they passed abandoned Iraqi trenches littered with everything from mortars and small arms to teapots and bedspreads.

The Marine column was moving along the Tigris, joined by thousands of Marines coming in from the west. Multiple convoys, including flatbeds, fuel tankers, first aid and supply vehicles, merged outside Numaniyah, creating a traffic jam at the Tigris bridge.

The coalition forces had punched well into the so-called Red Zone radiating from Baghdad and the region in which commanders feared Saddam’s forces might resort to the use of chemical or biological weapons.

“There may be a trigger line where the regime deems sufficient threat to use weapons of mass destruction,” said US Brig Gen Vincent Brooks.

Lead US infantry units donned their chemical suits after capturing a bridge 40 miles south-west of Baghdad. Some Marines began adding their protective boots to the suits they already wear, and Marine helicopter pilots were advised for the first time to be ready to don chemical suits at a moment’s notice.

The United States believes Iraq has mortar shells, artillery and short-range missiles capable of carrying chemical weapons, including the FROG-7 – used to carry mustard gas during the Iran-Iraq war – which has a 40 mile range.

Iraq denies it still has weapons of mass destruction, and US troops have yet to find any, although they have found hundreds of chemical protective suits.

US officials said yesterday that two of the six primary Republican Guard units - the Medina armoured division and the Baghdad infantry division – had been largely eliminated as an effective fighting force.

Army troops backed by artillery and air strikes destroyed nearly 100 military vehicles and weapons pieces belonging to the Medina division, including six tanks and 15 air defence weapons, Central Command said. One hundred Iraqis were captured.

A spokesman for the Baghdad infantry division claimed that only 17 men had been killed and 35 injured since fighting began.