U.S. Troops Parachute Into Northern Iraq
About 1,000 Army airborne forces parachuted into northern Iraq on Wednesday, seizing an airfield for a new front against Saddam Hussein.
The soldiers from the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade deployed in an airfield just before midnight local time, a senior Pentagon official said. He said the troops did not encounter any hostile fire.
CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey reports it's the first significant drop of U.S. troops into northern Iraq.
They're believed to be the vanguard of some other forces that will be coming to open up a new front from the north, against territory controlled by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The paratroopers had been expected for several days but were delayed by atrocious weather.
The vast majority of the coalition ground troops in Iraq are moving toward Baghdad from the south, after entering from Kuwait.
U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters closed off a highway and roads near the airstrip where troops were said to be arriving, outside the town of Bashur, about 30 miles northeast of the Kurd-controlled city of Irbil.
"I can only tell you yes, they've gone in. They're on the ground," said Lt. Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's Southern European Task Force. The 173rd, based in Vicenza, Italy, is part of the task force.
Several hundred U.S. special forces are already in northern Iraq, one defense official said, declining to elaborate on the mission. Coalition airstrikes in portions of northern Iraq controlled by Saddam's regime have hit Iraqi military forces in the field and other strategic targets, the official said.
Pentagon officials had hoped to have the Army's 4th Infantry Division invade Iraq from the north, but Turkey balked at allowing up to 62,000 U.S. troops on its soil to prepare for that option. The use of the 173rd shows the military has shifted to a smaller, lighter force.
Military officials say they would have liked to have secured key oil fields around the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk — and perhaps the cities themselves — by now, but they are confident of the revised plan's success.
Though no hostilities were expected during the deployment, the 173rd decided to parachute in rather then ferry troops in by plane so that a significant combat force could mass almost immediately to protect itself.
Besides the strategic cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, another key target in northern Iraq is Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown and the tribal center for most of his inner circle. Most of the Adnan Division of Iraq's Republican Guard relocated from the Mosul area to the Tikrit area shortly before the war began.
Another key mission for the 173rd could be to keep order in northern Iraq, which is controlled by two semi-autonomous Kurdish factions but also includes several splinter groups and a base for the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Islam. Turkey has said it may send more troops into northern Iraq to prevent refugees from moving north, while U.S. officials have said they advised Turkey against sending large additional forces into northern Iraq.