BAGHDAD: Capital Has Look of a Battlefield

April 8, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

AGHDAD, Iraq, Tuesday, April 8 — Gunfire erupted on the grounds of the Republican Palace early this morning, almost 24 hours after an American tank column entered the compound, which has been repeatedly bombed by allied planes since the war began. The explosions shook awake residents of a city that has now come to resemble a battlefield, with Iraqi special forces and militiamen taking up position on crucial streets and bridges.

Low flying aircraft bombed targets around the north end of the presidential compound and near the Planning Ministry. An enormous amount of gunfire — artillery, mortars and machine guns — thundered over the city in a ceaseless cacophony that began at first light.

The battle appeared to be for the area to the north of the site that American forces took on Monday.

There was fierce resistance by Iraqis whop were making attempts at a counterattack, with some of the fighting taking place inside the presidential compound itself.

The American units seemed to be making forays from the compound and taking control of areas farther around it and to the north, the heart of the Iraqi government area.

The Iraqis blocked three bridges across Tigris River from the eastern side with large concrete blocks and dump trucks, moving antiaircraft and artillery weapons on their side of the bridges. The area immediately around the Palestine Hotel was being used as firing positions, with the Iraqi forces apparently betting that they would receive no return fire because most foreign journalists still in the capital live there.

In the exchange the skies filled with the smoke of multiple rocket launchers, artillery and antiaircraft fire.

The battle for the center of government's quarter of Baghdad followed a battle through the night in the heart of the presidential compound. American officers at the international airport said that the relentless fighting included waves of suicide bombers, and that 600 Iraqis had died inside the presidential compound alone.

A tank battle was under way at the north end of the presidential compound near the Jumhuriya Bridge on the west back of the river, extending a mile to the north. The white smoke of American tank fire responding to the Iraqi machine guns and rifles came within 600 yards of Information Ministry.

About 9:30, two M1A1 Abrams tanks moved eastward across the Jumhuriya Bridge at the north end of the presidential compound until they had a clear line of sight and then fired several rounds at Iraq positions at the foot of bridge. The move by the tanks, enveloped with white smoke from their volleys, appeared to be the sign that American forces intended to advance to a crowded residential neighborhood on the east bank of the river.

At the same time, an intensive tank and infantry battle continued behind the tanks and appeared to be centered on a struggle for control of an area that included the Information Ministry and the main radio and television headquarters.

A-10 Warthog tank-buster jets circled the sky above the battle, diving every now and then through the thick black smoke to drop ordnance, each bomb exploding with a burst of fire and black smoke. As the battle wore on, Iraqi resistance appeared to be diminishing.

Shortly after the mortar fire and other explosions around 4:50 a.m., a fire burned in the palace compound on the west bank of the Tigris. American troops and tanks from the Third Infantry Division had rumbled in there on Monday morning as more than 1,000 marines battled their way across the Diyala River in the southeast of the city. Dozens of Iraqi soldiers were killed Monday in the fighting.

At Al Kindi Hospital, officials said at least 75 civilians were brought in on Monday with various injuries.

Iraqi forces defending the city center from the east bank of the Tigris fired back at the Americans with artillery and rocket-propelled grenades, but as night fell on Monday, some American troops remained in the bombed palaces in the compound, the Iraqi equivalent of the White House, which once symbolized President Saddam Hussein's absolute power.

At least nine people died, Iraqi officials said, in an attack that left a deep crater in the upscale Mansur neighborhood of the city.

In Washington, American officials said hours later that they had tried to kill Mr. Hussein in a strike on the same neighborhood. There was no indication here that Mr. Hussein or any member of his family had suffered.

In clear view across the river from the Palestine Hotel, two American Abrams tanks idled on the embankment Monday morning at the point where the sprawling palace grounds meet a bend in the Tigris.

A squad of American infantrymen in light brown camouflage uniforms, with flak jackets and combat rifles, scoured the cluster of date palms between the palaces and the water.

At one moment a group of about 20 Iraqi soldiers could be seen scurrying away from the tanks, up the riverbank to the north, only one of them carrying a rifle and several wearing nothing but boxer shorts.

Reaching a slipway guarded on their approach by a fence running down into the water, some of the men plunged into the river and began swimming upstream. The Americans opened fire, throwing cascades of water into the air but not, apparently, striking any of the men.

A minute or two later, huts along the sandspit near the Americans exploded into infernos, followed by the pop-pop of exploding munitions.

The scene seemed to illustrate the plight of Mr. Hussein's government, whose army has mustered little effective resistance in the capital despite much oratory about the grim fate awaiting American soldiers. That official defiance continued despite the Americans' increasingly incontrovertible presence.

On the eastern bank of the Tigris, a semblance of normality persisted. Cafes were still thronged with people and street vendors did their trade. But passage across the river was tightly controlled by militiamen.

Most of the city has been without electricity and water for a week. Working telephone lines are scarce. Long lines formed Monday outside the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross as people waited to place international calls. Bus stations were full of people trying to leave, but buses were scarce.

As for the government, it showed no sign of wavering. Less than two hours after the American incursion began, the Iraqi information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, was at the television networks' "stand-up" positions on the second-story roof of the Palestine Hotel's conference center, to insist that the reporters had not seen what they thought.

If reporters believed that they had witnessed an American drive deep into the heart of the capital, Mr. Sahhaf, in the green uniform and black beret of the ruling Baath Party, wished to disabuse them.

He implied that they, and American military commanders, were hallucinating about the tanks.

"They are really sick in their minds," he said. "They said they entered with 65 tanks into the center of the capital. I inform you that this is too far from the reality. This story is part of their sickness. The real truth is that there was no entry of American or British troops into Baghdad at all." The truth, he said, was that the Americans had pushed only a short distance out of the airport into a suburb where they had been surrounded by Iraqi troops, with "three-quarters of them slaughtered."

American television images of soldiers surrounded by the marbled sumptuousness of Mr. Hussein's palace, Mr. Sahhaf said, were shot in "the reception hall" of the airport. "They are just cheap liars!" he said.

To that, Mr. Sahhaf added a genial word of advice for reporters. "Just make sure to be accurate," he said. "Don't repeat their lies. Otherwise you will play a marketing role for the Americans."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company