World Hears War Begin Live From Baghdad

It began almost abstractly, with the muffled crunch of bombs.

But as the sound rose to an earth-shuddering roar and streams of antiaircraft tracers arced upward through the night sky toward unseen airplanes, the war in Baghdad became a reality.

For Iraqis being hammered by waves of U.S. warplanes, it was a time of terror. The world heard the Persian Gulf war begin live over telephones from the Rashid Hotel, and the terror was palpable.

“The sky is lighting up to the south with antiaircraft fire and red and flashes of yellow light,” CNN correspondent Peter Arnett reported from his sixth-story room. “There’s another attack coming in. . . . It looks like the Fourth of July.”

“It’s like the center of hell,” his associate, John Holliman, said quietly.

“We are crouched at the window, three miles from the center of the action,” Arnett continued. “The antiaircraft. Four bomb flashes. Planes circling for more targets, I guess.”

Asked what targets were being hit, the correspondents could only speculate.

“The radar installations, and an important military base out there,” NBC’s Tom Aspell said in a separate broadcast. “I’m guessing.”

“We’ve seen two major explosions--the telecommunications center near downtown and a hotel,” Holliman said. “And another one, we’re not sure where it hit.”

“We have some buildings that have incredible damage and a lot of antiaircraft batteries,” a unidentified photographer interjected. “A lot of action . . . .”

In addition, there were unconfirmed reports that a nuclear reactor in western Baghdad and chemical weapons stores were destroyed. NBC, which carried the reports, said they were received by British ham radio operators.

CNN had the best fortune with its telephone line, perhaps because that line, unlike those of the other networks, went directly through the Iraqi telecommunications center. Indeed, U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, after sternly warning that the Pentagon would continue to restrict information about Operation Desert Storm, declared: “The best reporting on the bombing I’ve seen was on CNN.”

At one point, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw interviewed CNN’s Bernard Shaw on his rival network and asked Shaw how CNN’s line had remained open. Shaw declined to answer, saying he thought it unwise to describe the arrangements CNN had made, but he had earlier mused on the air that he presumed CNN was broadcasting with Iraqi approval.

On ABC’s “World News Tonight,” the war erupted as a literal interruption. About 10 minutes into its early East Coast broadcast, anchor Peter Jennings in New York broke into a taped report to switch to correspondent Gary Shepard on the phone from Baghdad.

“There are flashes of light in the sky,” Shepard reported, “tracers of light, like antiaircraft fire.”

A few minutes later, about 4 p.m. PST, NBC’s Aspell was on the phone from Baghdad with Brokaw, also in New York. “The sky is full of tracers, full of tracers now, and there is a very big explosion on the western side of the city. You can hear it now, Tom.”

Aspell said he was having trouble interpreting the meaning of the green and red lights he saw from his room in the Rashid Hotel. Could he hear any planes? Brokaw wanted to know.

“We do not hear any airplanes yet,” Aspell answered. “Another big flash on the edge of the city.”

And then Aspell’s voice was gone. The line went dead at 4:05 p.m.

ABC’s line went dead, too. And CBS correspondent Allen Pizzey, who reported live the 1986 predawn attack of U.S. warplanes against Libya, was also in the hotel, but his phone line had died before the network was on the air.

The invading planes apparently were escaping with little damage.

“There are no hits on aircraft,” Arnett reported on the CNN line, which was still open. “They aren’t coming in low tonight. They aren’t meeting the antiaircraft fire.”

As sirens wailed the call for an air-raid blackout, the correspondents described how lights on the ground blinked out across Baghdad--it took an hour for all of them to go out. The correspondents said a hotel security man politely directed guests to a stairway leading down to a subterranean shelter.

“The raids are continuing, wave after wave,” Arnett said. “Now it looks like missiles launched--four or five within seconds of each other--right into the sky.”

A few minutes later, Arnett reported an “eerie silence,” punctuated by a knock on the hotel room door.

“We are going to hide!” a voice shouted.

“We assume that’s not the Fuller Brush man,” an anchorman back in the United States commented dryly as, without explanation, the news network returned its viewers back to the United States.

Moments later the broadcast from Baghdad resumed, with the correspondents still in the room. The source of the knock was never explained.

At another point, Shaw decided Holliman, leaning over a window sill, was in danger.

“As you’re talking, I’m going to pull your head out of the window,” Shaw said, his words audible around the world.

“You’re a good friend,” Holliman replied. “I’m not really happy to be here in this hotel, but we’re here.”

At another point, Shaw took up the narration: “We are seeing surgical bombing. No bombs out of the pattern. Specific areas, for the past three hours.”

With a dry laugh, Arnett countered: “It seems like three hours, but it has only been about an hour.”

Holliman turned poetic:

“It looks like 100 fireflies, like sparklers on the Fourth of July, as we look out about four miles. . . . The blast of air was like that you feel at Cape Canaveral when a rocket goes off.”

He described a particularly dramatic bomb blast.

“You can hear the explosion! We are backing away from (the) window. That was a rough one. It was far away. But it’s the biggest blast of air I have felt from a bomb so far.”

By now, allied aircraft were arriving in four-plane waves about 15 minutes apart.

“The U.S. planes aren’t trying to hit the antiaircraft fire,” Arnett said. “They have specific targets instead, it seems. . . . The skies are lit up. There is a terrible pounding going on for an hour and a half. The Air Force is serious about its mission tonight.”

Antiaircraft fire rumbled as it echoed off the concrete downtown.

“There’s a lull now,” Holliman said.

The three CNN correspondents were there with a crew of five others: producers Robert Weiner and Ingrid Formanek, cameramen Mark Biello and Nick Robertson and technician Kriz Manich.

Arnett, a five-year veteran of CNN, who spent 20 years with the Associated Press, is an experienced war correspondent. He won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1966 for his first-hand accounts of the war in Vietnam.

Shaw, the network’s principal Washington anchor, has been with the network since its inception in 1980.

Malnic reported from Los Angeles and Rosenstiel from Washington.