Tale Of Two Battlefronts

As U.S. forces surged across deserts and rivers Sunday to within 100 miles of Baghdad, several other allied units in Southern Iraq engaged in intense gunbattles.

In perhaps the most dramatic advance on the ground, the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade covered roughly 230 miles in 40 hours to take positions about 100 miles from Baghdad — less than a day's march.
The brigade raced day and night across rugged desert in more than 70 tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles. At one point the soldiers ran into an hours-long firefight, killing 100 Iraqi militiamen who confronted the Americans with machinegun-mounted vehicles. No American injuries were reported in the battle.

The Iraqi fighters were believed to be members of the ruling Baath party militia, loyal to one of Saddam's sons.

U.S. and British forces captured territory, towns and military installations — often with little or no opposition. But in some locations, Iraqi forces fought back with artillery fire or guerrilla-style counterattacks.

Meanwhile, allied officials continue to hold secret talks with members of Iraq's elite Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard about defecting or surrendering.

Speaking Sunday morning on the CBS news program Face the Nation, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the talks have so far been extensive and limited to military officials.

"There's a lot of communication going on," he said

In some cases the talks are held directly with senior officials. Other times, allied officials speak with Iraqi troops who then return to their villages and communities and relay the information to Republican Guard leaders.

Commenting on the progress made so far by allied troops, Rumsfeld said:

"If one looks at the a map, it's pretty clear they haven't controlled their northern part of their country. We have a growing number of troops up there. The west - they don't control. We have troops pretty well moving all around that western portion and the forces coming from the south are moving towards Baghdad. That means the air is dominated by coalition aircraft."

While the Iraqi's have military aircraft, they've yet to deploy them. Instead, Rumsfeld said, they've, "parked them near mosques, schools and hospitals so we can't attack them."

The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera aired footage from Iraqi television Sunday of interviews with what the station identified as captured American prisoners, and also showed bodies in uniform in an Iraqi morgue that it said were Americans.

There was no confirmation that the prisoners were U.S. troops, or if they were, what unit they were attached to. The U.S. Central Command had no comment.

Asked if the existence of American prisoners of war in Iraq would affect the U.S. military strategy, Rumsfeld said, "oh no, it can't."

He called the footage part of Iraqi propaganda, "and responding to Iraqi propaganda is not what the United States armed forces are about."

Iraqi state television reported fighting between Iraqi ruling Baath party militias and U.S.-British forces near the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 95 miles south of Baghdad. It said the top Baath party official in Najaf was killed.

Najaf is on the western bank of the Euphrates River, along one of the main highways leading to Baghdad.

Mosques in Najaf and Karbala are the most sacred sites to Iran's majority Shiite Muslims, after those in Saudi Arabia.

Najaf is the site of the tomb of Imam Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Shiites aspire to bury their dead in its cemetery, which stretches for miles and is the largest in the Muslim world.

Also Sunday, coalition troops were battling Iraqi forces in Umm Qasr, a strategic port city in southern Iraq. Its modern docks complex, adorned with huge portraits of Saddam, was secured Saturday, according to the U.S. Central Command, but coalition forces on Sunday were still trying to rout "pockets of resistance," said Capt. Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces.

Coalition troops engaged in street-to-street battles against guerrillas, including paramilitary fighters of the Baath party.

"In some areas the forces give up easily, or retreat, or surrender, and in other places diehards — people that want to fight to the death — carry on fighting," British spokesman Lt. Col. Ronnie McCourt said.

"Just because you've been through an area once, doesn't mean to say that you've complete confidence that it won't spring up again."

Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deepwater port, is strategically vital as a conduit for shipments of humanitarian aid to the war-torn nation.

Some of the Iraqi forces had changed into civilian clothes to blend in with the residents. Iraqi officials in Baghdad called the resistance in Umm Qasr "heroic," and said images of the fighting, broadcast around the world, proved the coalition was not in control of the city.

The U.S. Army took Nasiriyah, a major crossing point over the Euphrates northwest of Basra, Central Command said.

Near the Persian Gulf, Marines seized an Iraqi naval base Sunday morning at Az Zubayr. In the command center, Marines found half-eaten bowls of rice and other still-warm food.

Near Basra in the south, Marines saw hundreds of Iraqi men — apparently soldiers who had taken off their uniforms — walking along a highway with bundles on their backs past burned-out Iraqi tanks.

Allied forces have captured Basra's airport and a key bridge. But commanders say they are in no rush to storm the city, hoping instead that Iraqi defenders decide to give up.

In Baghdad, a series of air raid sirens and explosions were heard on the outskirts of the city at midmorning Sunday. A cloud of smoke hung over the capital; residents believed it was created in part by fires set to conceal targets from bombardment.

Iraqi officials said more than 500 Iraqis in four cities were injured in allied airstrikes Saturday; they said 77 civilians were killed in Basra, the main city in southern Iraq.

Iraqi television reported that Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit, had been bombed several times. Al-Arabiya, an Arab satellite TV news channel, reported that four people were killed in those attacks.

On Saturday, the commander of the operation, U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, discussed the military's three-stage war plan, during his first news conference since the beginning of the war.

He referred to Wednesday's initiation of combat operations as D-Day. Friday's massive aerial assault on Baghdad was called A-Day, and the subsequent ground offensive was named G-Day.

U.S., British and allied forces, he said, were attacking the enemy "on our terms" using a flexible mix of special forces, ground and air power.

So flexible was the plan that on Wednesday President Bush and his senior national security advisers tore up their choreographed opening to the war, and acting on information presented by CIA Director George J. Tenet, decided on an airstrike and cruise missile attack on the Baghdad complex, called Dora Farm, in an attempt to kill Hussein and other senior members of the leadership, reports Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.

Additionally, on Thursday, the administration decided to move up the ground operation by 24 hours. It would commence 15 hours before the first large-scale airstrikes hit Iraq, reports Woodward.

Woodward says the process built in some unprecedented flexibility and surprise, characteristics that have defined the war's opening days.