IRAQ-CONFLICT: Ally casualties mount

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Att.Editors: The following item is from the Qatar News Agency (QNA)

DOHA, Mar 24 2003 (IPS) - The advance through the Iraqi desert took a heavy toll on the Western forces.

At least 12 US troops were captured and several were killed in two separate incidents at the strategic city of an-Nasiriyah. A US army captain was killed and 12 other soldiers injured in an attack by a fellow soldier on three command tents of the 101st airborne division in Kuwait while two Royal Air Force pilots were confirmed dead after their Tornado fighter-bomber was downed by friendly fire as it returned from a Baghdad bombing run.

British television station ITN said its correspondent Terry Lloyd, 50, was believed to have been killed Saturday when his crew came under fire near the southern city of Basra. Two of his colleagues were unaccounted for, ITN said in a statement.

On Sunday night and early morning on Monday US and British aircraft kept up their assault on government buildings in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad lighting up the night sky with fiery explosions as Iraqi gunners sprayed anti-aircraft fire at their unseen attackers.

US aircraft also attacked Tikrit, the birthplace of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, killing four people, and hit the cities of Mosul and Basra.

Al-Jazeera satellite television channel and the Iraqi government said bombs had killed 140 iraqis people and injured nearly 700 others in the four days of the US-led war against Iraq.

US military officials said their forces were now within 160 kilometers of Baghdad, raising the prospect of imminent clashes with the Iraqi elite Republican Guard units, which are expected to provide much stiffer resistance than the regular army units encountered so far.

"We will reach the vicinity of Baghdad very soon," said US Lieutenant General John Abizaid in a press conference in Doha last night.

Abizaid further said "less than 10" (US and British) soldiers had died in fighting near an-Nasirijah. According to an embedded reporter from CNN, the US fatalities occurred when an amphibious vehicle took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade that penetrated the vehicle and ignited a huge blaze inside.

The 12 US soldiers who are missing were captured after their lightly armed supply convoy took a wrong turn and ran into Iraqi troops. US combat troops rushed to the area and managed to extricate some survivors, Abizaid said.

The Iraqi army said it killed 25 British and US soldiers at an-Nasiriyah. Iraq’s Defense Minister, General Sultan Hashim Ahmed, said in Baghdad that 10 tanks and 20 armored vehicles had been destroyed in the fighting.

Abizaid described the fight at an-Nasiriyah as – a sharp engagement" and speculated that special forces attached to Iraq’s elite Republican Guard had moved south to coordinate resistance to the ôrapidly advancing US forces".

Abizaid said Iraqi forces had resorted to several ruses to inflict damage on US soldiers. Some troops had raised a white surrender flag and then opened fire with artillery. In another, troops dressed as civilians welcomed the Americans and then opened fire.

In Washington, US officials condemned video footage taken of the missing US troops as ôa violation of the Geneva Convention on the humane treatment of prisoners of war".

Iraqi television broadcast pictures of captured US soldiers.

Under the Geneva Convention, it is illegal to parade prisoners of war on television or put them on display for the public, but a Red Cross official in Geneva, Florian Westphal, also pointed out that the coalition side has also shown television footage of POWs.

Al-Jazeera channel and Iraqi television broadcast pictures showing dead US soldiers. About one dozen corpses were shown.

A dramatic grenade and gun attack was reported early Sunday by a US soldier on senior commanders, at a camp in northern Kuwait housing part of the 101st airborne division.

In Doha Brigadier General Vincent Brooks summarized the US position in southern Iraq saying it had been a "tough day of fighting" but coalition forces had seized the Gulf port of Umm Qasr; the approaches to Basra, Iraq’s second largest city; the airfield at Tallil; and bridges at an-Nasiriyah.

Brooks said air attacks yesterday concentrated on destroying the elite Republican Guard forces outside Baghdad.