Army forces launched a nighttime attack on Saddam International Airport just outside Baghdad on Thursday and fought running battles with Iraqis along the city's southern fringes. "A vise is closing on the regime," President Bush told cheering Marines stateside.
Some front-line units went on heightened alert against the threat of chemical weapons, ordered to wear rubber boots and suits despite temperatures that soared into the 90s. There was fierce fighting in the south, where desperate Iraqis armed with rifles charged tanks in a suicide raid. "We mowed down" the attackers, said Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy.
Tracer rounds lit the night sky and artillery boomed near the airport a few miles from the heart of Saddam Hussein's capital. Army units encountered little resistance along the airport road, their convoy passing dead Iraqi soldiers and piles of discarded military uniforms.
Along the city's southern edge, Army tanks and Bradley vehicles destroyed more than seven Iraqi armored personnel carriers and more than 15 Iraqi tanks in fighting that went on for more than four hours.
Two weeks into the war, American commanders reported a string of successes - on the battlefield and within an Iraqi population initially reticent about embracing invading troops. Kurdish fighters in the north chipped in, when a top leader suggested they may agree not to seek control of the northern city of Kirkuk.
Despite declarations that tough fighting lies ahead, the nation's top military official indicated there may not be an all-out battle for Baghdad. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested isolating members of the old regime in the capital - cut off from the country - with an "interim administration" in place to begin work on a postwar government. The toll of American troops dead passed 50, and Bush visited Camp Lejeune, N.C., which has lost 13 - more than any other installation. "He's in heaven," the commander in chief told the family of one fallen Marine in a private moment.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
To the cheers of thousands earlier in a speech, he vowed victory, and said, "A vise is closing on the regime."
Iraq issued the latest in a series of exhortations in Saddam's name. "Fight them with your hands. God will disgrace them," it said, referring to invading American and British troops.
But the daily urgings seemed increasingly at odds with the military situation across the country, and Myers said Saddam had lost control of 45 percent of Iraq's territory.
As conventional units fought their way to the outskirts of the capital, officials said special forces had raided the Tharthar presidential palace near Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. Documents were seized at the site north of Baghdad, said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks at U.S. Central Command in the Persian Gulf, but no ranking members of the regime were found.
"That's all right, he added, "there's other operations ongoing."
