Ground Troops Tighten Grip

U.S. troops continued pushing into Iraq on several fronts Saturday, bolstered by the surrender of thousands of Iraqi forces, including an entire army division.

As the Army's 3rd Infantry Division surged more than 100 miles across the desert toward the capital of Baghdad, U.S. and British Marines closed in on Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.

The coalition's battle for Basra, a strategic oil hub of 1.3 million people less than three dozen miles from Iraq's southern border with Kuwait, got a boost Friday when the main Iraqi army division guarding the city surrendered from its top leaders down.

Iraq's 51st Infantry Division (Mechanized), which is composed of some 8,000 soldiers and about 200 tanks, was regarded as one of the better units in Saddam Hussein's regular military, though it was not part of the more elite Republican Guard. Before the latest war, its job was mainly keeping the lid on the restive Shiite Muslim population in southern Iraq that rebelled against Saddam after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

An Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad who declined to give his name, said Pentagon claims the 51st Division had surrendered were untrue.

Pilots of warplanes returning to aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf said they had been performing close air support missions for troops in southern Iraq.

Far to the north, the United States used five missiles to attack positions of Ansar al-Islam, a radical group linked to al Qaeda, which controls a small enclave within semiautonomous Kurdish regions.

CBS News' Phil Ittner reports U.S. forces have taken the southern Iraqi city of An Nasiriyah from the 11th Iraqi light Infantry division.

He says the Iraqi division surrendered, and enemy prisoners of war were taken.

"They're sifting through them to see if there are any members of the Republican Guard with them," says Ittner.

In Baghdad, air strikes continued, with more explosions heard Saturday, including a huge blast that rocked the center of the city.

A large hole was blown into the dome of Baghdad's Peace Palace and the Security Headquarters appeared to have taken a direct hit.

Referring to the Peace Palace, Iraq's Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf lashed out at Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld: "This criminal dog calls it a military site."

Also hit were targets in the northern Iraqi cities of Kirkuk, Mosul and Tikrit — the latter being the hometown of Saddam and most of his inner circle.

Pentagon officials said more than 1,500 bombs and missiles could be dropped on Iraq during the first day of the full-fledged air campaign, which began Friday afternoon in Washington time — Friday evening in Iraq.

They said targets included not only the Iraqi leadership and their offices but also headquarters of Saddam's most loyal fighters: The Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard and Special Security Organization.

The American and British forces sweeping across southern Iraq frequently found Iraqi bunkers, tanks and weapons eerily abandoned, and pilots reported seeing Iraqi troops fleeing well ahead of the coalition advance. Still, pockets of fierce resistance cropped up.

Two British Navy Sea King helicopters collided over international waters in the Persian Gulf. Six British crew members and an American are missing and presumed dead.

It was the second helicopter accident since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. On Friday, eight British Royal Marines and four American Marines died when another Sea Knight crashed in Kuwait.

The U.S. death toll for the war in Iraq now stands at seven, including the victims of both helicopter crashes, and two combat fatalities.

By early next week, U.S. ground forces led by the Army's 3rd Infantry Division are likely to be at the outskirts of Baghdad, where they could face greater danger from the Republican Guard.

"The intention is to convince the regime that it is time to leave, and if they don't we will try to take them out by force," Rear Adm. Matthew G. Moffit, commander of the USS Kitty Hawk battle group in the northern Persian Gulf, told reporters moments after Friday's air attacks began.

The Kitty Hawk is one of five U.S. aircraft carriers whose F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcats are flying missions against Iraq. Hundreds more Air Force planes — heavy bombers as well as fighter bombers — are attacking from air bases in Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and elsewhere in the region.

Ships and submarines in the Navy battle groups launched more than 300 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which use satellite signals to guide their 1,000-pound warheads to buildings and other fixed targets.

The officials said U.S. planes involved in the airstrikes included Air Force F-15E and F-16 fighters as well as B-1B, B-2 and B-52 bombers and F-117A stealth fighter-bombers. They flew from airfields as far away as Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., and about 30 bases in the Middle East. The Navy's missions were all flown from carriers in the Persian Gulf or Mediterranean Sea.

A senior defense official familiar with air war planning said all the bombs and missiles dropped Friday were "smart" weapons, with laser or satellite guidance, as opposed to "dumb" bombs guided only by gravity.

During the 1991 Gulf War only about 10 percent of bombs dropped were "smart."