US troops rename Baghdad airport

American forces secured Baghdad airport today, a crucial step in their bid to establish a base of operations for coalition forces just outside the Iraqi capital.

Saddam International Airport was promptly renamed Baghdad International Airport by the military.

“It is a gateway to the future of Iraq,” said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, US Central Command spokesman.

In capturing the airport, US tanks punched through a perimeter wall and rumbled past a towering portrait of President Saddam Hussein. Soldiers conducted a building-by-building sweep for Iraqi defenders. And the airport entrance closest to Baghdad was sealed off.

Brooks said US forces faced “very uncoordinated, small-unit attacks” from remnants of Iraqi units.

“They were soundly defeated in each case,” he said at a briefing at the Central Command headquarters in Qatar.

The capture of the airport prevents Iraq’s leaders from fleeing by air and enables coalition forces to use it now or in the future, Brooks said. “Most important, we preserved it for the future of Iraq,” he said.

To the southeast of the capital, meanwhile, the Marines reported that about 2,500 Republican Guards surrendered between the cities of Kut and Baghdad. Marines pulled on chemical suits as they prepared for what could be the final assault on Saddam’s seat of power.

The attack on the airport began at dusk yesterday with units of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division moving in to seize the 2.5-mile main runway. Gunshots were heard from inside. It was unclear how many Iraqi troops remained in the airport.

Navy warplanes from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk dropped scores of satellite- and laser-guided bombs on the airport and a nearby military complex overnight and early Friday, officials said.

F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcat strike fighters hit a hanger and fuel depot at the airport with a barrage of 500-pound laser-guided bombs, said Lieutenant Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the ship.

Eight 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs were dropped on a target listed as a military complex near the airport, DeWalt said. Other targets included artillery posts, a possible surface-to-air missile site and bunkers, he added.

The airport is a key first objective for infantry and Marines converging on the capital. Securing it would allow coalition forces to bring in more troops, military equipment and humanitarian aid.

Group Captain Al Lockwood, a spokesman for British forces in the Gulf, called the airport “a jewel in the crown to the coalition.”

“It is right on the doorstep of Baghdad itself. It must be a great loss to the regime, at losing something that will provide us with a great capability,” Lockwood said.

Meanwhile, the US Marine 1st Division was massed on the south-eastern outskirts of Baghdad after hours of pushing up the Tigris River past abandoned Iraqi positions with little resistance.

However, an Iraqi force was believed standing between them and the capital. Despite high temperatures, the Marines pulled on stifling protection suits in case of chemical attack.

During the push north yesterday, Marines fought in close-quarters combat in the city of Kut, at one point mowing down a group of Iraqis who mounted a suicide charge against a tank with their AK-47s. The Marines estimated 80 Iraqis died in the fighting at Kut.

The military said two Marines were killed and one wounded in the fighting in Kut. Another Marine was killed near Kut when his automatic weapon went off while he was sleeping, firing one round into his chest.

Reporters with Marine units moving toward Baghdad said about 2,500 young Iraqi men had surrendered overnight. One Marine group had to pause to set up a makeshift prisoner camp.

On the 3rd Division’s way to the airport, the troops had to negotiate a single-lane road with Iraqi fighters firing from all sides. For four hours in punishing heat, tanks and Bradley armoured vehicles tried to pick out fighters amid civilians standing next to houses watching the armoured column pass.

“Fire, fire, kill them,” Captain Chris Carter, the commanding officer of Alpha Company, ordered at one point.

At least one US soldier was killed by friendly fire. Three were wounded by Iraqi fire, and three soldiers collapsed from heat exhaustion.

Along the road from the Euphrates River to Baghdad were hundreds of burning vehicles, civilian and military. Hundreds of dead Iraqis, most in uniform, lay next to the vehicles.

Today, members of the 3rd Infantry continued a sweep through the outskirts of Baghdad amid palm groves, rice paddies, cornfields and irrigation canals, and came across what appeared to be the front line of a Republican Guard company.

A firefight broke out and two Republican Guards in uniform were wounded. Two Republican Guards who had put on civilian clothes were also taken prisoner. One, speaking through an interpreter, said: “We got bombed last night, and most of our tanks were destroyed.”

Near Numaniyah, southeast of Baghdad, Marines manned a checkpoint Friday on a highway leading to the capital and said they were seeing a steady flow of young men they suspected were Iraqi soldiers trying to rejoin their shattered units.

One Marine had his M-16 trained on two nervous-looking young men who sat by the side of the road with their arms around their knees. Beneath their long white Arab robes, they were wearing Iraqi military uniforms. One man had an Iraqi military ID card. They were carrying plastic bags containing military jackets. The two were to be taken away for questioning.