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发信人: Systems (落叶), 信区: English
标 题: Allies Hit Setbacks on Road to Baghdad
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (2003年03月24日09:39:18 星期一), 站内信件
Allies Hit Setbacks on Road to Baghdad
Monday March 24, 2003 1:20 AM
Iraq used ambushes and even fake surrenders to kill and capture U.S. troops
Sunday, inflicting the first significant casualties on the allied forces dri
ving toward Baghdad. U.S. war leaders declared the invasion on target despit
e the bloody setbacks.
Up to nine Marines died and a dozen U.S. soldiers were taken prisoner in sur
prise engagements with Iraqis at An Nasiriyah, a southern city far from the
forward positions of the allied force.
On the third day of the ground war, any expectation that Iraqi defenders wou
ld simply fold was gone.
``Clearly they are not a beaten force,'' said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman o
f the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ``This is going to get a lot harder.''
Even so, the U.S.-British coalition fought to within 100 miles of Baghdad an
d tended to a growing northern front.
Baghdad came under heavy air attack early Monday, even as a mosque blared ``
Allahu Akbar'' and ``Thanks be to God,'' perhaps to boost morale.
Allied soldiers came under attack in a series of ruses, U.S. officials said,
with one group of Iraqis waving the white flag of surrender, then opening u
p with artillery fire; another group appearing to welcome coalition troops b
ut then attacking them.
Lt. Gen. John Abizaid of U.S. Central Command said a faked surrender near An
Nasiriyah, a crossing point over the Euphrates River northwest of Basra, se
t off the ``sharpest engagement of the war thus far.'' Up to nine Marines di
ed before the Americans prevailed, he said.
Twelve U.S. soldiers were missing and presumed captured by Iraqis in an ambu
sh on an army supply convoy at An Nasiriyah, Central Command said.
``We, of course, will be much more cautious in the way that we view the batt
lefield as a result of some of these incidents,'' Abizaid said.
Some of the missing prisoners were from Fort Bliss, Texas, said Jean Offutt,
an Army spokeswoman at the base, where families members gathered Sunday nig
ht.
``The mood, of course, is very tragic,'' she said.
U.S. and British officials said some of the stiffest resistance was coming f
rom paramilitary guerrillas known as the Fedayeen Saddam and from Saddam Hus
sein's personal security forces.
``These are men who know that they will have no role in the building of a ne
w Iraq and they have no future,'' said Peter Wall, chief of staff to the Bri
tish military contingent in the U.S.-led coalition.
President Bush kept his eye on the big prize - the removal of Saddam's gover
nment and Iraq's eventual disarmament.
``I know that Saddam Hussein is losing control of his country,'' Bush said u
pon his return from the Camp David retreat in Maryland. ``We are slowly but
surely achieving our objective.'' He demanded that U.S. prisoners of war be
treated humanely.
With allies closing in, Iraqi leaders appealed for a united Arab front to co
ndemn the invasion but knew they wouldn't get it. ``There is no hope in thes
e rulers,'' Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said.
But Russia and Chinese foreign ministers reasserted their view that the inva
sion has no legal basis and asked for an immediate halt.
Arab television showed what it said were four American dead in an Iraqi morg
ue and at least five other Americans identified as captured soldiers.
``I come to shoot only if I am shot at,'' said one prisoner, who said he was
from Kansas. Asked why he was fighting Iraqis, he replied: ``They don't bot
her me; I don't bother them.''
Also, a British warplane was shot down in a friendly fire attack by U.S. Pat
riot missiles, killing its crew of two, and a grenade attack in an Army base
in Kuwait left a captain dead and a U.S. soldier as the suspect.
In the most notable gain for the coalition, soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Div
ision's 2nd Brigade moved 230 miles in 40 hours, killing scores of Iraqi mil
itiamen who engaged them with machine guns, to take positions less than a da
y's journey from Baghdad.
The brigade raced day and night across rugged desert in more than 70 tanks a
nd 60 Bradley fighting vehicles. No American injuries were reported in that
battle.
Iraqi Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmed expressed confidence his
troops can hold the capital.
``If they want to take Baghdad they will have to pay a heavy price,'' he sai
d.
Several other allied units engaged in intensive gunbattles Sunday. In southe
rn Iraq, a soldier from the 3rd Infantry Division died in a vehicle accident
.
Efforts intensified to assemble forces in northern Iraq, where air strikes h
ave gone after radicals linked to the al-Qaida terrorist network but prospec
ts for ground assaults have been limited because neighboring Turkey balked o
n becoming a staging ground.
In Kuwait, U.S. officials investigated the attack at the 101st Airborne Divi
sion's command center, where an assailant threw grenades into three tents. T
hree of the wounded were seriously injured; Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert,
27, died.
The accidental downing of the British plane was another blow. The Tornado GR
4, based in Marham, Britain, was returning from an operational mission early
Sunday and was engaged by the missile battery, British officials said.
It was the third aerial accident involving British personnel since the war b
egan. Six British troops and a U.S. Navy officer died when two British helic
opters collided, while eight British and four U.S. Marines were killed when
their helicopter crashed near the Kuwait-Iraqi border.
Iraqi television reported that Saddam Hussein's home town, Tikrit, had been
bombed several times.
Near the Persian Gulf, Marines seized an Iraqi naval base Sunday morning at
Az Zubayr. In the command center, Marines found half-eaten bowls of rice and
other still-warm food.
Near Basra in the south, Marines saw hundreds of Iraqi men - apparently sold
iers who had taken off their uniforms - walking along a highway with bundles
on their backs past burned-out Iraqi tanks.
Allied forces have captured Basra's airport and a bridge. But commanders say
they are in no rush to storm the city, hoping instead that Iraqi defenders
decide to give up.
Although Iraq was getting little help diplomatically, many in the Muslim wor
ld expressed anger about the war.
Anti-war protests continued in many cities around the world, one of the bigg
est in Pakistan. Children in Lahore chanted anti-American slogans and other
demonstrators carried portraits of Osama bin Laden and Saddam as more than 1
00,000 people joined in a peaceful rally.
--
Voici mon secret. Il est très simple:
on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur.
L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
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