U.S. Troops Mount Two-Pronged Battle to Capture Holy City

American forces are pursuing victory in this besieged Euphrates River city on two fronts, one conventional and the other decidedly not.

On the combat front, infantry units had nearly encircled and sealed off the city by nightfall Tuesday. On the unconventional front, an armored unit was trying to punch into the city center and destroy a huge statue of Saddam Hussein, hoping to land a psychological blow.

At the same time, American civil affairs officers and their Arabic-speaking translators knocked on doors in the city’s northern outskirts, trying to win over residents cowering in their homes. In some cases, a civil affairs commander said, families emerged with young girls in their finest dresses, ready to pose for souvenir photographs.

“We almost have a playbook of weapons, different pitches for different towns,” said Maj. Val Siegfried, the 101st Airborne Division’s top civil affairs officer, who is working closely with psychological operations forces to undermine the Iraqi regime.

In Najaf, the so-called psy-ops units are blaring messages from loudspeakers mounted on Humvees, Siegfried said. From air- and land-based mobile studios they bombard residents with taped TV and radio broadcasts, some heard by Iraqis on cheap radios dropped earlier by psy-ops planes. The city is littered with propaganda leaflets.

Siegfried declined to elaborate on the attempt to destroy the Hussein statue, but a 101st battle captain, Kenrick Bourne, said the effort was designed to “make a dramatic impact.”

“Just like in the south, where the Marines are defacing Saddam pictures or blowing up symbols, we’re trying to remove symbols in a way that the people can see it happening,” Bourne said. “Removing these symbols is one step forward in putting people at ease and removing [Hussein’s] influence. Day by day, through all our operations, our goal is to remove his regime.”

For two days, Siegfried said, nine civil affairs teams of four to six soldiers each have visited homes to check on civilians and offer basic medical care. The reaction in the predominantly Shiite holy city has been guarded, at best, he said.

“Overall, they’re still afraid and skeptical,” Siegfried said. “They don’t want to go against the regime, in case the regime survives” -- a reference to a Shiite uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War that the government brutally suppressed as the U.S. failed to deliver on promised support. “They’re not exactly out dancing in the streets” at the arrival of Americans, he said.

Some residents have greeted the teams and their “terps” (interpreters) warmly and say they are happy to see the Americans, Siegfried said. “We’re still a novelty, so they love to have their pictures taken with us.”

He said civilians in Najaf had adequate food and water, and that the government apparently doubled food rations in recent months in anticipation of war.

Siegfried said a steady stream of 30 to 50 civilians an hour was leaving the southern edge of the city. Most were camping out in fields or villages, waiting out the fighting.

The civil affairs teams are not yet asking Najaf’s civilians to identify the estimated 400 to 800 paramilitaries still holed up in the city, for fear of exposing civilians to reprisals, Siegfried said. But the psy-ops messages are telling civilians that U.S. forces are in the city to topple the Hussein regime, not to harm them.

Messages aimed at the paramilitaries are urging them to surrender and assuring them of humane treatment as prisoners of war. American forces continued to seize males in civilian clothes and transport them to detention centers for interrogation.

About 200 prisoners of war have been taken in Najaf since the combat operation began early Sunday, officers said. Some were captured or detained, while others surrendered, they said.

American infantrymen continued to find what Bourne called “significant caches” of weapons in the city, including automatic rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

“We are making very steady progress” in Najaf, he said. “We’re not having any significant setbacks.”

On Monday, a division soldier was killed, apparently during a mortar attack, officers said. No U.S. casualties were reported from fighting Tuesday in or around Najaf.

The paramilitaries were still periodically harassing U.S. units Tuesday with “technicals,” or pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles mounted with machine guns. Fighters on foot fired AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, but with considerably less intensity than the day before, officers said.

Intelligence officers said the 1st Brigade of the 101st had seized an airfield just east of Najaf. They said the division commander, Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, was seen riding in his command vehicle at the airfield after it was taken.

A U.S. tank and a Humvee ran over land mines Tuesday in Najaf, intelligence officers said, adding that they had no further information on the incidents.

Apache gunships, which had pounded the paramilitaries Monday, mounted no missions Tuesday, intelligence officers said, because they could find no more “targets of opportunity.”

Forty-eight miles north, the Hussein regime ordered all Baath Party officials and functionaries out of Karbala, another Shiite holy city, intelligence officers said. Karbala lies between armored forces from the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division to the south and west, and the Medina Division of Hussein’s Republican Guard to the north and east.

One commander said the withdrawal of party officials could be a prelude to the use of chemical weapons by Iraqi forces, which U.S. aircraft and rockets have attacked relentlessly north of the city. U.S. forces wear chemical/biological suits 24 hours a day and carry gas masks on their hips.