Two Iraqi Ministries Are Afire After U.S. Warplanes Strike

April 8, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS with JANE PERLEZ

BAGHDAD, April 8 — United States forces launched an air and artillery assault on central Baghdad this morning, targeting government buildings in the heart of the city. The Planning Ministry and the Information Ministry were on fire after low flying American planes attacked the center, and bursts of Howitzer fire sounded across the city.

Armored vehicles fired cannons and machine guns across the Sinak bridge at Iraqi forces on the eastern side. In a show of force that also symbolized American ease of movement, two Abrams tanks drove onto the central Jumhuriya bridge over the river Tigris and fired from their positions.

An A-10 Thunderbolt tank-busting plane that had apparently taken part in the assault crashed near the Baghdad airport. The pilot ejected and was safe, American military officials said.

On the southeast edge of Baghdad, in an area of low sand-colored houses, American marines encountered bursts of small arms fire at midmorning and one Marine was wounded in the leg.

At least three journalists were reported killed and several others injured during the fighting.

On Monday an Air Force bomber dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on a Baghdad neighborhood in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and his sons. Bush administration and military officials said that the attack came just 45 minutes after the C.I.A. passed on a tip to military planners that Mr. Hussein and other Iraqi leaders were meeting at a house in Mansur, an exclusive residential neighborhood where top leaders are known to assemble.

It was unclear whether anyone was killed or wounded in the bombardment, which American military officials said left a "huge smoking hole."

President Bush said today that he did not know whether or not the Iraqi leader survived the attack.

"The only thing I know is that he is losing power," the president said at a news conference in Ulster at the conclusion of a two-day meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "The grip I used to describe that Saddam had around the throats of the Iraqi people are loosening. I can't tell you if all ten fingers are off their throats, but finger-by-finger it's coming off."

Mr. Bush added: "We will not stop until they are free. Saddam Hussein will be gone. It might have been yesterday."

In the hours just after dawn today, two Arab satellite television offices were hit in downtown Baghdad. Al Jazeera television said its base at a house not far from the Ministry of Information was hit by two air to surface missiles. An Al Jazeera reporter, Tariq Ayoub, was killed. Abu Dhabi television said its office, not far, from Al Jazeera was hit by small arms fire.

At least two other journalists were killed when the Palestine Hotel, where international journalists are working, was hit during a round of shelling by the Americans.

Reuters announced that one of its television cameramen — Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian national based in Warsaw — died when the hotel room where he working was hit by a tank shell. At least three other employees of the news agency were wounded.

In Madrid, officials of the Telecino Spanish television station said today that one of their cameramen had died of injuries he sustained in the blast. The cameraman, Jose Couso, 37, lost a leg and suffered injuries to the jaw.

For a second day in a row, the defiant information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, appeared at a roadside news conference to tell reporters that the invaders were being defeated even though his own ministry was not secure enough for him to preside over.

The raging battles have left the Americans in firm control of an area encompassing the principal seats of governmental power.

American forces held an area stretching upwards of a mile and a half along the western bank of the Tigris River, and inland at least a mile deep. That area contains several presidential palaces and ministries, including the Information and Planning departments, the radio and television center, and the Al Rashid and Mansour hotels. The Americans also took at least one of the three bridges across the Tigris.

Today's battle lasted six or seven hours and appeared to have involved American tanks and infantry moving north from the Republican palace that the Americans seized in a raid from the airport at dawn on Monday.

Overnight these forces battled through pitched blackness, without a moon and with the city's electrical system shut down. Iraqi forces fought back from inside the palace and suicide bombers threw themselves against tanks.

The toll on Iraqis appeared to have been severe, and senior Iraqi officials at the Palestine Hotel were seen clutching each other with tears rolling down their faces, whether for concern about their personal safety or about the pounding being taken by Iraqi forces could not be known. That pounding includes a devastating assault Monday that targeted Saddam Hussein and his two sons at a large residential compound in the Mansour district.

[International aid agencies warned today that medical supplies in Baghdad were critically low and hospitals were overburdened with wounded.

["They have reached the limit of their capacity," Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in Geneva.

At the height of the battle in the presidential compound, Iraqi television devoted its broadcasts through this morning to old film of Mr. Hussein being greeted by an adoring crowd accompanied by choirs singing praises to him and his sons, routine fare for Baghdad TV, and thus no firm indicator of whether the leader had survived.

The TV went off the air in the late morning after American troops pushed out of the presidential compound and made their way up a boulevard about a thousand yards further north, to the area of the Information Ministry and broadcast center.

The battle heightened as American troops reached the point where the compound abuts the Al Jumhiriya bridge, one of three midtown bridges. Bursts of fire escaped from the muzzles of Abrams tanks, and Iraqi defenders fought back with machine gun and rocket fire. American A-10 Thunderbolts — the tank-buster aircraft nicknamed the Warthog — hovered in the dense black smoke above the battle, diving every few minutes and releasing bombs on Iraqi positions.

At about 8:45 a.m., three Abrams tanks moved onto the bridge and advanced about 500 yards toward the eastern bank, halting for three hours at the first bridge support. The tanks could be seen firing shells at Iraqi targets on the bank, including a 10-story building south of the bridge, from which rifle, rocket and machine gun fire had been directed at the tanks.

Resistance from the building appeared to subside after the Americans fired about a dozen shells. The tanks later turned their barrels across the river and to the south, in the direction of Iraqi targets a mile or more away.

At this point reporters in the Sheraton Hotel adjacent to the Palestine could see an intensive battle raging along Al Rashid military airfield about five miles away; that apparently was the point of the furthest advance of American marines, who crossed a tributary of the Tigris on Monday.

It was in the early afternoon when a shell evidently struck the Palestine Hotel, destroying a room on the 15th floor on the east side with a view to the battle that was raging across the river at the presidential compound.

The wounded were carried out of the hotel and taken by car to Iraqi hospital.

Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the United States Army Third Infantry Division, was quoted on the Reuters news agency shortly after the incident saying that an American tank had fired a single round at the hotel.

"The tank was receiving small arms fire and RPG fire from the hotel and engaged the target with one tank round," the general said, referring to rocket-propelled grenades.

In the hours before the strike, Iraqi fighters had taken positions in buildings adjacent to the Palestine and Sheraton hotels to fire against the Americans.

The attack led to scenes of near panic inside the Palestine Hotel, with journalists rushing down darkened stairwells to the hotel forecourt, many in flak jackets and helmets.

Some senior Iraqi officials appeared to have abandoned the hotel where they took up residence during the first 20 days of the war in an apparent attempt to find safety for themselves in a building they assumed would be immune from bombing and ground fire. Journalists tempted to leave the immediate area were ordered to remain.

Despite the ferocious fighting, some elements of normal daily life continued. Taxis painted their regulation orange and white could be seen cruising for fares, and a horse-drawn dray moved slowly down the street behind the Palestine Hotel delivering water supplies to homes and businesses.

People could be seen clustering under building eaves, seeking protection from the battle, while others dashed across the street, glancing to the battles in the north. By lunchtime, as the battle subsided, government workers appeared to check through the neighborhood for damage.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company