Iraq's skies are ours, declares Pentagon

The United States has declared air supremacy over all of Iraq, asserting its warplanes could fly anywhere with impunity, even though an Air Force attack plane was shot down near Baghdad.

Until now the Pentagon had said it owned the skies over all of Iraq except in the Baghdad area and over Tikrit, the home town of President Saddam Hussein, where air defences were the strongest.

“Coalition air forces have established air supremacy over the entire country, which means the enemy is incapable of effective interference with coalition air operations,” Maj Gen Stanley McChrystal, vice director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, told a news conference last night.

He did not mention that an Air Force A-10 warplane was shot down near Baghdad today. It is believed to be the first allied aircraft other than a helicopter to be downed by an Iraqi surface-to-air missile since the war began on March 20. US Central Command officials said the pilot ejected safely, was recovered by allied ground forces and was in good condition.

Pentagon officials said the A-10 appeared to have been hit by a French-made Roland missile, usually fired from a truck.

Iraq began the war with formidable air defences in the Baghdad and Tikrit areas, which had not been damaged by years of American and British air strikes in “no-fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq. Iraq’s offensive air forces are weak, and not a single Iraqi aircraft has taken off to challenge allied planes.

McChrystal said allied aircraft were focusing on supporting American ground forces in and around Baghdad, attacking remnants of Iraq’s Republican Guard and striking ”time-sensitive” targets like the Baghdad building where US intelligence believed a meeting was under way involving Saddam and at least one son.

McChrystal would not say Saddam was the target of that B-1B bomber strike yesterday. He described the attack as ”very, very effective” and said the enormous hole punched into the ground by four one-ton bombs was “where we wanted it to be”. He would not describe the target.

The Air Force officer in charge of the bomb drop from the B1-B, Lt Col Fred Swan, said in a telephone interview today that they launched four 2,000lb satellite-guided bombs – two of a type that penetrates into buried structures before detonating and two non-penetrating types.

As US ground forces expand their presence in Baghdad, a site of particular interest to US officials is the military prison at Rasheed Air Base, of which Marines took control today. Pieces of army uniforms possibly belonging to two US prisoners of war were found at the prison.

Iraq is holding at least seven US soldiers prisoner.

The Pentagon says it is holding more than 7,000 Iraqi PoWs.

Pentagon officials say US ground forces have encircled Baghdad, although they have said little publicly about action in the north end of the city.

Most US ground operations in Baghdad over the past several days have been in the daytime, a military official said, to drive home the point that American troops can go where they want, when they want. Slowing at night allows them to pull back to more secure locations and get a night’s sleep while coalition air forces continue to pound Iraqi forces, the official said.

Asked about a US Army tank attack on Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel, in which two journalists were killed, McChrystal said it was an act of self-defence by the US soldiers, who reported they had come under fire from the hotel.

Journalists at the scene said there was no fire coming from the hotel.

A Jordanian correspondent for the Arab television network al-Jazeera was killed yesterday when a US bomb landed on the network’s Baghdad office.