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US seizes northern Iraq airfield; civilians killed
( 2003-03-27 08:12 ) (7 )

Heavy fighting raged in southern Iraq on Wednesday, US paratroopers took control of a key airfield in the north and at least 15 Iraqi civilians were killed in a Baghdad street during another intense bombardment.

The United States denied that it had intentionally targeted the Shaab residential district of Baghdad, where Iraqi witnesses spoke of a twin American missile strike, but the Pentagon left open the possibility that a missile or bomb had gone astray.

Reuters correspondents counted 15 scorched corpses lying amid blackened, mangled cars and rubble from broken buildings in the Shaab area of Baghdad. Flames poured from an oil truck. Yelling residents pulled a man with a bloody head from rubble and said a pregnant woman was among the dead.

On a day in which confused reports emerged of heavy fighting around the southern city of Basra as well as closer to Baghdad, President Bush said the United States wanted to protect Iraqi civilians. But he warned President Saddam Hussein that his day of reckoning was near.

About 1,000 soldiers of the US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Italy, parachuted into a key airfield in a Kurdish region of northern Iraq, becoming the first sizable American military presence in that part of the country, defense officials said.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no Iraqi resistance. US troops could use the airfield to drop armor and reinforcements to open a new front in the war.

In southern Iraq, a British official said a column of Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers poured out of Basra, where civilian unrest was reported on Tuesday. As it headed south, it was attacked by US and British air and artillery forces.

SANDSTORMS CONTINUE

The destruction in the Baghdad shopping district caused the first known substantial civilian casualties in a week of unrelenting air attacks on targets in and around the city.

Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director for operations for the US Joint Staff, said the US military did not target anything in the Shaab district and he did not know if it was hit by an errant US missile or an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile falling back to earth.

Another US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "Is there a potential for an errant missile to go astray like a Tomahawk or something like that? Yes."

South of Baghdad, the area around the Shi'ite Muslim shrine city of Najaf emerged as a key battleground. In one Iraqi attack, a US military officer said an unspecified number of US tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles had been destroyed but said he believed their crews had escaped from the vehicles.

US forces advancing toward Baghdad fought a fierce battle with Iraqi forces for control of a bridge over the Euphrates river close to Najaf.

CNN said a large armored column of elite Republican Guard units streamed out of Baghdad heading toward US forces near Najaf, who were braced for a battle.

BUSH: "DAY OF RECKONING"

Bush told hundreds of troops and their families in Florida that US fighting units were now facing desperate troops loyal to President Saddam Hussein.

"We cannot predict the final day of the Iraqi regime, but I can assure you, and I assure the long-suffering people of Iraq, there will be a day of reckoning for the Iraqi regime, and that day is drawing near," Bush said, speaking at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, which houses US Central Command.

"Our pilots and cruise missiles have struck vital military targets with lethal precision," he said.

In contrast, he said Iraqi units "wage attacks while posing as civilians. They use real civilians as human shields. They pretend to surrender, then fire upon those who show them mercy," Bush said.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said more than 500 people had been wounded and 200 homes destroyed as US forces stormed through Nassiriya city earlier.

A US military official said some of the 12 soldiers whose supply convoy was ambushed near Nassiriya in southern Iraq on Sunday may have been killed by their captors although they tried to surrender.

The Pentagon said it was flying its high-tech 4th Infantry Division and other units totaling more than 30,000 troops to the Gulf to join the invasion of Iraq. Some commentators have said US ground troops were overstretched, especially since Iraqi resistance has been more troublesome than expected.

Bush launched the war with British support to depose Saddam and take control of his alleged weapons of mass destruction. Iraq denied having any such weapons and US forces have not yet found any.

Britain's defense minister Geoff Hoon accused Saddam loyalists of firing at their own civilians to prevent them from rising up against the government.

An Arab television channel broadcast video of two dead soldiers and two prisoners of war, all said to be British.

Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his main ally on Iraq, were to meet at the Camp David presidential retreat later on Wednesday to discuss political and humanitarian aspects of the conflict.

The United Nations World Food Program said Iraq would probably need the biggest humanitarian operation in history to feed its entire population after the US-led invasion.