US troops make raid into Baghdad

United States ground forces made a bold daytime raid into the Iraqi capital today as other coalition troops moved in from the south to test the strength of President Saddam Hussein’s defenders, who are believed to have fallen back for an urban battle, officials said.

US Air Force Major General Gene Renuart said one American unit swept in and out of Baghdad, but he declined to say if any other troops remained in the city.

The incursion was not an attempt to capture large sections of Baghdad, which remained under tenuous Iraqi government control.

Rather, the intent was to show the Iraqi leadership “that they do not have the control they speak about on their television,” Renuart said in a briefing at Central Command in Qatar.

Witnesses reported seeing no US forces around the Tigris River, which flows through the centre of the city of five million. And a reporter touring several sections of the city by car at midday saw no coalition soldiers.

The Iraqi military, in a statement read on satellite television, said US forces were repulsed when they tried to advance on Baghdad from the south. “We were able to chop off their rotten heads,” the statement said.

Iraqi TV played patriotic music, and soldiers and militiamen loyal to Saddam Hussein vowed to keep fighting.

Earlier, Navy Captain Frank Thorp, a US Central Command spokesman, said American armoured combat units “have moved through the heart of Baghdad, defeating the Iraqi troops we have encountered”.

Thorp refused to be specific about the troops’ incursion.

Firing mortars as they went along, US Marines approaching Baghdad drove along roads lined with deserted shops and grubby tyre repair shops. There were the bodies of Iraqi fighters on the side of the road.

Refugees, including women carrying babies, were heading away from the city on foot, some of them begging for water.

Smoke filled the air from trenches of burning oil that Iraqis had set on fire.

At one point, Marines said they came across four men who played dead – and then jumped up and started firing.

In addition to the raid by US armoured troops into Baghdad from the south, coalition forces were surrounding the city to prevent reinforcements from entering it, Renuart said.

US armoured combat troops today took several “objectives” surrounding Baghdad in the north and northwest, according to a US official.

With Saddam’s most-trusted fighters likely embedded in Baghdad’s heart, the coalition must take its next steps very carefully, British spokesman Group Captain Al Lockwood said.

“I believe that those still loyal to the regime may well retreat into the city in some kind of last ditch stand,” Lockwood said today. “But we are hopeful that a large number of them have gone home.”

In marshy lands barely a mile south of Baghdad’s city line, Marines fought a tense battle with militant forces loyal to Saddam.

Marines with bayonets were in the reeds, lunging at the fighters.

Many of the combatants were foreign – Jordanian, Egyptian and Sudanese, said Lt Col B P McCoy. Iraqi officials have said there are thousands of such Arab volunteers.

There was only light traffic on Saturday on the hazy streets of Baghdad. There were long lines at gas stations as tens of thousands of residents fled north.

Members of Saddam’s Fedayeen, a notorious militia, appeared in the city centre for the first time since the war began. A blackish cloud hung over the southwestern horizon – in the direction of Baghdad’s airport.

At the airfield, members of the 101st Airborne Division were searching for Iraqis hidden in an extensive underground network of tunnels, said Lt Col Lee Fetterman.

Hundreds of Iraqi fighters had been killed, he said, including several would-be suicide attackers who were found with bombs strapped to their bodies.

Iraqi officials insisted today their troops had prevailed at the airport.

Shortly after the first tanks rolled into Baghdad, soldiers with the 3rd Infantry Division captured a Republican Guard key base about 35 miles southwest of Baghdad.

Army forces were unopposed as they rolled into the guard’s Medina Division headquarters in the town of Suwayrah, where it appeared Iraqi defences had completely collapsed.

Bunkers and foxholes and dozens of artillery pieces – anti-aircraft guns, tanks, and armoured personnel carriers – were abandoned. The officer’s parking lot was empty.

The headquarters had been heavily damaged in air strikes.

Inside the general’s office, troops found a flag, photos of other senior officers and a memo with instructions on how to deal with a US attack: “Don’t panic, don’t act stupidly,” it said.

In northern Iraq today, US aircraft attacked Iraqi positions in the direction of the oil centre of Mosul, near the line between Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters.

Saddam’s fighters, who had struggled Friday to hold a key bridge in the area, appeared to be pulling further back into Iraqi-held territory.