U.S. Troops Break Through Iraqi Lines; POW Is Rescued

U.S. Marines broke through Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard south of Baghdad early today and began rolling straight toward the Iraqi capital, commanders said.

In fierce fighting that inflicted heavy Iraqi casualties, elements of the 1st Marine Division subdued the Baghdad Division of the Republican Guard at the city of Al Kut, about 90 miles southeast of the capital, and made it “irrelevant to the battle” for Baghdad, the Marine commanders said.

The Marines pushed across the Tigris River and severed Route 6, one of the main arteries leading north to the capital, the commanders said. They said their troops now controlled access to Baghdad along that route.

In a breakthrough along a second approach to the city, a brigade of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division battled its way north into the Karbala Gap, securing a strategic chokepoint less than 50 miles south of the capital and moving for the first time inside the “red line” perimeter that is Baghdad’s final line of defense.

Bradley fighting vehicles and soldiers from the 3rd Infantry rolled up Route 9, also a key artery leading north. They moved toward Karbala, a Shiite Muslim holy city of more than 500,000, where they battled the Medina Division of the Republican Guard, some of the best-trained and most heavily armed troops standing between the allied forces and Baghdad.

Allied aircraft pummeled Medina tanks and troops. The thundering booms of artillery and rocket fire shook the air every five seconds throughout the night and early morning, and the sky in the direction of Karbala glowed red.

Along Route 9, soldiers of the 3rd Division’s 3rd Brigade encountered minimal resistance and scores of surrendering soldiers.

“Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end,” Capt. Steve Barry of the brigade’s Cyclone Company said. “We pounded the heck out of them in the last few days. That probably made them more eager to surrender.”

Defeating the Medina Division would leave their march into Baghdad virtually open, U.S. commanders said. They said that they had detected movement of other guard divisions trying to come to the aid of the Medina but that the reinforcements seemed to have failed.

Commanders said the 1st Marine Division had flanked other Republican Guard units near the Baghdad Division. Neither the Marines nor the Army reported any American casualties.

On the eastern flank of the war, Brig. Gen. John F. Kelly, assistant commander of the 1st Marine Division, on Tuesday ordered a message sent to Republican Guard soldiers:

“Come out. We don’t want to kill any more of you. You are cut off from Baghdad and have no artillery. Remember how well you were treated as prisoners in 1991. Remember also how efficiently we can kill you. Many of your officers are already resting safely and comfortably in coalition hands.

“Know that people we have liberated in the last few weeks have welcomed us.... We can be your best friend or worst enemy.”

With U.S. paratroopers in northern Iraq and large Army and Marine units to the west, south and east of Baghdad, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday, “The circle is closing.”

Rumsfeld said Hussein’s government had been planting rumors that U.S. officials have been negotiating with Iraqi leaders, trying to convince the Iraqi people that “the coalition does not intend to finish the job.”

“There are no negotiations taking place,” Rumsfeld said. “There is no outcome to this war that will leave Saddam Hussein and his regime in power. The only thing that the coalition will discuss with this regime is their unconditional surrender.”

Military officials said the number of U.S. troops killed in the war had risen to 46, from 44 listed Monday. Thirty-eight have been killed in combat and eight in other incidents, including accidents. Sixteen service members were listed as missing in action and seven as prisoners of war.

In Baghdad, thunderous explosions shook the center of the city early today as allied warplanes struck Hussein’s presidential compounds along the Tigris River, sending flames and clouds of smoke into the sky.

A message read on state television on behalf of Hussein called on the people of Iraq to rise up in a jihad, or holy war, against U.S. and British forces.

“Strike at them, fight them,” the statement said. “They are aggressors, evil, accursed by God, the exalted. You shall be victorious and they shall be vanquished.”

The statement was read by Hussein’s information minister, Mohammed Said Sahaf. The fact that Hussein did not appear renewed speculation in Washington about his whereabouts and well-being.

At the White House, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer sought to sow fresh doubts about Hussein’s fate. Fleischer said U.S. officials do not know whether he is dead or alive.

“The fact that he failed to show up for his scheduled appearance [on television] today raises additional questions,” he said.

“If you’re in Iraq,” Fleischer said, “if you’re part of the Iraqi regime, if you’re part of the leadership structure, especially, if you had something hard or concrete to report, such as that Saddam was alive, the question is, why aren’t they showing it?

“And particularly today, after they advertised ... that Saddam would himself address the Iraqi people and he failed to show up, it does raise interesting questions.”

Hussein has not been seen in public since before the war began. Videotapes showing either him or a look-alike have been aired on state television three times, but in none of the tapes was it clear when they were made.

Some U.S. officials say Hussein might have been hurt, perhaps killed, during the first airstrikes of the war, which targeted a compound reportedly occupied by Hussein and his two sons.

Meanwhile, at a televised news conference Tuesday, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said 6,000 volunteer fighters had arrived from other Arab and Muslim nations, a claim that could not be verified. Ramadan said more than half were suicide fighters.

“They are a time bomb,” he said. “We want each and every one of these martyrs to do their duty and kill as many of [the invaders] as possible.”

At the Pentagon, officials said they may accelerate deployment of 35,000 soldiers of the Army’s 1st Armored Division and 1st Cavalry Division from the United States to Iraq by two or three weeks.

Military planners said the 1st Armored and its support units were likely to sail for Kuwait next week.

A senior defense official said the 1st Cavalry might deploy in the next week to 10 days.

The officials decided last week to rush a 500-soldier light cavalry contingent of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment to Iraq. One official said the unit would “run up and down the supply lines and protect them.”

The hurry to augment U.S. forces fighting in Iraq was providing fodder for critics who have suggested that senior military officials did not anticipate the stiff resistance put up by Iraqi fighters.

Rumsfeld declined to characterize a decision to send the 2nd Armored Cavalry unit by air rather than sea, other than to say that Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of allied forces in Iraq, had requested that the soldiers join the fighting quickly.

The defense secretary said the hurried departure was part of “adjustments” that Franks had made to his war plans.

On the Euphrates River about 75 miles from Baghdad, U.S. Army infantry troops had nearly encircled Najaf, a city of more than 560,000. An armored unit was trying to punch into the city to destroy a large statue of Hussein.

At the same time, American civil affairs officers and their Arabic-speaking interpreters were knocking on doors in the northern outskirts, trying to win the support of residents. In southern Iraq, skirmishes persisted around Azubayr Bridge leading into Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, from the nearby town of Safwan.

Iraqi military and paramilitary forces launched mortars, artillery and machine-gun fire at a checkpoint just east of the bridge, where British forces have established their most forward line of control.

Around the nearby village of Shuaybah, meanwhile, three Humvees filled with U.S. troops launched a small reconnaissance drone just west of Basra. Shuaybah, site of one of Iraq’s largest oil refineries, is nominally under British control. It has drawn repeated attacks by Iraqi paramilitary fighters in civilian clothes, as well as mortar fire.

On Tuesday morning, U.S. Cobra helicopters and a British Challenger tank struck the Bin Majid munitions factory just outside Basra. In defiance, paramilitary forces raised an Iraqi flag a few hours later over its scarred facade.

“We’ll see men go into the building without weapons, which means we can’t engage them,” said Ian Pickford, a platoon commander in the first battalion of the Irish Guards.

As he spoke, machine-gun fire from inside the factory compound sent British soldiers at the Azubayr Bridge checkpoint diving for cover.

With three large explosions shortly after midday, however, the British blew up thousands of tons of ammunition and other war materiel abandoned by the Iraqis in the area.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, said several towns east of Basra were being supplied with water after several dry days.

Four tanker trucks were sent to the town of Zubayr, said Abed Manuel Yousef, a Red Cross engineer, and five generators were brought into Shuaybah to get a water treatment plant up and running.

In addition to power outages, Red Cross officials said, they were having problems with pipes, broken by some residents in their desperation for water.

In the north, U.S. bombs and cruise missiles, along with ground operations by U.S. special operations troops and Kurdish fighters, destroyed a training camp belonging to the extremist Ansar al Islam group, military officials said.

They said 300 to 500 members of the group were using the camp near the villages of Gulp and Sargat. A “significant number of terrorists” were killed, the officials said.

Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Ansar al Islam had been training with “elements of the Al Qaeda network, [and] we believe they were developing poisons for use against civilians” in Europe and the U.S.

“Our teams are carefully examining the facilities,” Myers said, “to uncover any potential information or evidence that may still exist.”

*

Perry reported with the 1st Marine Division and Mohan with the 3rd Infantry Division. Times staff writers David Zucchino with the 101st Airborne Division near Najaf; Tracy Wilkinson in Doha; John Daniszewski in Baghdad; Mark Magnier near Basra; and Esther Schrader and Edwin Chen in Washington contributed to this report.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Toll on the battlefield

Casualties

*--* Military totals (as of 5 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday)

U.S Britain Iraq Killed 46 27 unknown

Missing 16 0 unknown

Captured 7 0 4,000

*--*

Civilian casualties

* Iraq has said at least 650 civilians have been killed.