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Conflicting
Reports About Military Status Of Baghdad
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Iraqi
forces tour Baghdad streets
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BAGHDAD,
April 5 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Amid conflicting reports
on the presence of the U.S. forces in Baghdad Saturday, April, 5, Iraq
rejected television footage purportedly showing U.S. forces overrunning
a Republican Guard barracks in a suburb of the Iraqi capital.
The
televised scenes were only in Abu Ghreib area, some 35 kilometers (more
than 20 miles) southwest of the Iraqi capital, Iraqi Information
Minister Mohamed Said Sahhaf.
The
footage, shot by an Associated Press cameraman and shown on CNN and the
Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera, showed U.S. soldiers and tanks
patrolling a battle-scarred landscape after an assault on the barracks
of the Iraqi elite troops.
"The
film they broadcast to you is a lie," Sahhaf said, adding
"This is a ploy."
"From
what I glimpsed, these gardens with rows of palm trees on the side,
which you saw in the images, are located in the south of Abu Ghreib,
where we have surrounded the Americans and British," he said.
Americans
Disagree
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U.S.
forces insist they are already in Baghdad
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While
U.S. officials said they had pushed into the "heart" of the
Iraqi capital, an U.S. commander said around 1,000 Iraqi troops had been
killed in the drive.
Navy
Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said the
thrust into Baghdad "wasn't a patrol - go in and come out.
"We
had the opportunity and we moved in," Thorp said, adding "It
was done in a deliberate way. When we had the opportunity we took it and
moved forward into the middle of the city."
A
reporter working with Agence France Presse (AFP) said he saw dozens of
Iraqi military vehicles burning in the streets, but adding he saw
no signs of the U.S. forces in the capital.
The
Iraqi television run a footage of U.S. tanks destroyed in the Iraqi
capital, adding that Iraqi forces killed hundreds of U.S. and British
forces to the south of the Iraqi capital.
Conflicting
reports also emerged out of a fierce fighting around Baghdad's Saddam
International Airport on the southwestern outskirts of the Iraqi
capital.
Many
of patrolling Iraqi soldiers and other heavily armed men were seen
heading toward the airport which U.S. forces announced they captured
Friday and now held "secure".
The
Iraqi information minister said earlier that President Saddam's elite
Republican Guard had driven
U.S. and British forces out of the facility.
"We
have defeated them, in fact we have crushed them. We have pushed them
outside the whole area of the airport."
Sahhaf
said Iraqi forces have killed over 300 U.S. troops in heavy fighting
around the airport.
Asked
in an interview on Abu Dhabi satellite television what damage Iraq had
inflicted on U.S. troops in and around the airport, he said as for
"the information I have, I think more than 300 of them were
killed."
However,
U.S. Central Command spokesman Major General Victor Renuart denied the
claims, telling reporters at the U.S operating headquarters that the
airport was "secure" following its seizure by U.S. troops on
Friday.
Renualt
said U.S. forces could now enter Baghdad at will. "We can move at
times and places of our choosing," he told reporters at US Central
Command in Qatar.
But
he acknowledged that "the fight is far from over in Baghdad".
In
an earlier statement read out on Iraqi satellite television, the Iraqi
regime claimed "hundreds" of "enemy" troops were
killed south of the capital Baghdad.
"A
violent battle took place (Saturday) between the courageous forces ...
of the Republican Guard, the inhabitants of Baghdad, and the enemy who
tried to approach the southern outskirts of Baghdad," the statement
said.
The
Iraqis were able to "decapitate" the enemy forces, it added.
"The enemy had to halt and retreat ... once again, our armed
forces' fire pursued them, leaving hundreds dead."
But
a U.S. military spokesman scoffed at that claim, saying the only Iraqi
troops he had seen at the airport were "dead or captured".
Surprised
Iraqi forces, including members of the Republican Guard and the ruling
Baath Party, put up fierce resistance, mostly with AK-47 rifles and
rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), according to accounts by officers and
soldiers.
Further
to the southwest, the U.S. 101st Airborne Division launched an air
assault to secure the central town of Karbala, a major Shiite Muslim
town less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Baghdad.
Major
Mike Slocum, the 101st Aviation Brigade's watch officer, told AFP
helicopters had transported more than a battalion of soldiers into the
outskirts of Karbala.
"Basically
they are on the ground to go through and secure the highways and supply
routes and also they are looking to squelch any paramilitary threat in
the area," he said.
Missile
In Tigris
A
missile landed in the Tigris river next to Saddam Hussein's main
presidential palace in the Iraqi capital.
Smoke
briefly rose from the water after the missile fell around 9:15 pm (1715
GMT), sounding off a loud explosion heard around central Baghdad. A
plane roared overhead at about the same time.
The
sprawling Republican Palace on the banks of the Tigris has been
repeatedly hit by bombs or missiles since the US-led coalition launched
the war March 20 aimed at toppling Saddam.
Coffins
Found In Basra
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British forces said they found human remains, along with coffins and photos of dead bodies in
Basra
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In
the south, British forces said they found 200 coffins containing human
remains stashed in bags at an abandoned military base near Al Zubayr, 20
kilometers from the strategic southern city of Basra.
Pool
television pictures showed dozens of simple wooden coffins and plastic
bags full of bones of bones which a military spokesman on the scene said
might be from a previous war as they were quite old.
"They
discovered some bodies in a barracks between Basra and Az Zubair,"
a British military spokeswoman at war headquarters in Qatar told
Reuters. Another spokesman said the remains of around 200 people had
been found in a warehouse.
British
Group Captain Al Lockwood told BBC radio from Qatar that British forces
on the outskirts of Basra would not be launching a shock assault on the
city but would proceed "slowly, slowly".
Meanwhile,
U.S. central command in Qatar said nine bodies recovered during a
mission to rescue an army private held in southern Iraq were believed to
be those of U.S. soldiers.
U.S.
officials said three U.S. soldiers were killed in a vehicle accident at
Baghdad's airport, while two pilots were killed when their attack
helicopter crashed in central Iraq early Saturday.
In
northern Iraq, Kurdish military sources said US special forces and Iraqi
Kurd rebels had cut off the southern exits from the strategic oil city
of Kirkuk. U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters were also seen making a new
advance towards the northern oil city of Mosul. Kirkuk and Mosul are the
Kurdish rebels' main goals.
Backed
by a fleet of Black Hawks, Apaches and Chinooks, the U.S. 101st Airborne
Division also launched
an air assault on the central Iraqi town of Karbala.
On
the diplomatic front, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed
in a telephone conversation on the need to continue Russian-American
political dialog on the Iraq war, the Kremlin said.
An
International Red Cross medical team that visited four Baghdad hospitals
on Friday saw several hundred wounded and dozens of dead from bombing
and fighting, a spokesman said Saturday, adding that the facilities were
under considerable strain.
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