SADDAM’S PALACES IN BAGHDAD OCCUPIED
BAGHDAD, 7 Apr. (IPS) American forces entered central Baghdad early on Monday, taking control of some key sites, including three palaces of the Iraqi dictator, among them the main Presidential Palace, but also the Information and the Foreign Affairs Ministries, according to correspondents "embedded" with US forces.
As a 5,000-strong brigade of the US Third Infantry Division with more than 60
tanks and 40 armoured vehicles pressed into the west of the capital along
Highway 8 on Monday morning, it was reported that two more journalists and two
US Marines were killed in what seems to be a new "friendly fire".
"There is few sporadic resistance from the Iraqi side", said a French correspondent with US troops taking control of a main strategic bridge leading to the al-Rashid military airport. "There are some fifty tanks, backed by Cobra helicopters firing on the Iraqis and securing the bridge", he added.
US tanks are parked at all three presidential palaces and also on a parade ground once regularly used by Saddam Hoseyn to display his military might.
"The facilities appeared to have been largely abandoned and there was no indication of the whereabouts of Mr Hoseyn or his two sons", another correspondent of the Financial Times of London reported.
The move came as British forces in the south fought to consolidate their position in central Basra and claimed to have found the body of Ali Hassan al-Majid, alias "Chemical Ali", one of Saddam Hoseyn’s cousin in charge of the southern front.
The nickname of Chemical Ali was bestowed to General al Majid, a former taxi driver elevated to the rank of a four stars general, after he used lethal chemical and nerve gas against the Kurdish population of Halabja, near Iranian border, slaughtering at least 6.000 inhabitants, most of tem children, women and elderly in 1988 in the one hand and massacring hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi’ites in Basra, following the uprising of the population in 1991.
Major Andrew Jackson of Britain's 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death of Mr al-Majid during a briefing earlier on Monday. But Geoff Hoon, UK defence minister, said later he could not yet "absolutely confirm" Mr al-Majid's death.
Allied forces bombed the Ba’ath party headquarters in Basra, where Mr al-Majid was thought to be seeking refuge.
Monday's rapid incursion was described by one observer as a "Reichstag moment" - a reference to the pictures of Germany's captured parliament signalling the fall of Berlin, and the Nazi regime, in 1945.
Reporters embedded with the Marines said a number of US troops had been killed and injured by Iraqi artillery as they tried to cross a canal on the outskirts of the city. The Marines later succeeded in crossing the canal at the southern edge of the city.
Mohammed Sa’id al-Sahhaf, Iraqi Information Minister, in an open-air press conference on Monday, rejected all news about Allied advance in the Capital to dispute claims that US forces were close to the ministry of information.
"There is no presence of the American columns in the city at all...They were surrounded and they were dealt with. Their columns were slaughtered", he said as journalists could hear sounds of explosions coming from nearby fronts.
A US military spokesman said the goal was not to take ground in the capital, but to show the Iraqi regime the coalition can go anywhere in Baghdad "at its choosing". "The Iraqi military is no longer an effective fighting force", the FT quoted Captain Frank Thorp, a Centcom spokesman.
"When the Iraqi regime sees and finally believes that our troops are in the city, they will come forward and resign", he said. "Until then, the fighting will continue".
In Basra, Iraq's second largest city after Baghdad, British troops continued their push into the centre of the city, ending a two-week stand-off.
There were no immediate figures for the number of casualties in Monday's fighting but US officials said on Sunday that about 2,000 Iraqis had been killed in and around Baghdad.
Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, estimated that casualties were arriving at Baghdad's Al Yarmouk hospital at the rate of about 100 an hour during Saturday's US incursion. The ICRC warned that hospitals were struggling to cope.
Meanwhile, coalition forces were investigating an apparent "friendly fire" incident in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, in which an American F-15 attacked a convoy of US and Kurdish forces. A Kurdish party official said more than 18 people were killed and dozens injured, including Wajeeh Barzani, brother of Mr. Mas’ood Barzani, the leader of the Democratic Party of (Iraqi) Kurdistan. ENDS US ENTERS BAGHDAD 7403