Tale Of Two Battlefronts

U.S. Marines defeated Iraqi forces near the southern city of an-Nasariyah in the sharpest engagement of the war so far, U.S. Central Command said Sunday. But in a separate engagement, Iraqi forces ambushed an army supply convoy and 12 soldiers were missing.

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said about 10 Marines were killed in a faked surrender by Iraqi forces outside of an-Nasariyah. The Marines came under fire while preparing to accept what appeared to be surrendering Iraqis.

"We of course will be much more cautious in the way we view the battlefield as a result of some of these incidents," said Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid. But he stressed that coalition forces would continue to place high priority on avoiding civilian casualties.

"It was a tough day of fighting for the coalition," Brooks said. Abizaid called the fighting there the "sharpest engagement of the war thus far."

"But the Marines were successful," Abizaid said. "They defeated the enemy. First reports indicated they destroyed eight tanks, some anti-aircraft batteries that were in the region, and also some artillery, along with a number of infantry."

Iraqi military officials claimed earlier that 25 American soldiers were killed in the operation in an-Nasariyah, a major crossing point over the Euphrates River northwest of Basra.

Abizaid, speaking at the Qatar headquarters of U.S. Central Command, said he thought fewer than 10 troops were killed in the fighting and that "a number" of troops were wounded.

He said coalition forces encountered significant resistance in the city.

"Despite our losses, the enemy remains in grave danger and our victory is certain," Abizaid said. "Operations in the west continue to put pressure on Iraqi units.

"We continue to hit command and control centers and logistics nodes in that area as well. In the south our air units continue the campaign towards Baghdad and continue to operate in and around the area in support of our ground forces."

CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports the progress towards Baghdad has gone so well that Navy pilots have to improvise to provide more ground cover.

"F18-E Super Hornets have become mid-air tankers," she says. "Instead of carrying bombs they're carrying fuel tanks.

"They fly higher and faster and therefore can get the fuel to the other fighters over Iraq quicker so those fighters can stay in position longer."

The ambush that left 12 soldiers missing came after the driver of an army supply convoy took a wrong turn. The Iraqis destroyed six coalition vehicles in the ambush, Brooks said.

Brooks said the military believed the 12 were "in the custody of the irregular forces that conducted the ambush, and their status is not known." Abizaid said the captors were either Republican Guard forces or Iraqi guerrillas.

Abizaid said some of the 12 missing soldiers "ended up on Baghdad TV."

Earlier Sunday, the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera relayed Iraqi television footage 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. The station said they and the prisoners were captured around Nasiriyah.

Abizaid said he thought the main reason there haven't been mass surrenders on the same scale as in the 1991 Gulf War is that Iraqi forces were trapped in Kuwait.

"They were a long way from home," he said.

When asked about the allied timetable for advancing on Iraq, Abizaid "we are on track. We will arrive in the vicinity of Baghdad soon."

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."

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."

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.