Waheed Odusile With Agency Report
1 April 2003
Lagos — With the prospect of a long drawn war in Iraq no longer in doubt, Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak said yesterday the war would produce "one hundred new bin Ladens," driving more Muslims to anti-Western militancy.
Addressing Egyptian soldiers in the city of Suez, Mubarak said "when it is over, if it is over, this war will have horrible consequences.
"Instead of having one (Osama) bin Laden, we will have 100 bin Ladens," he added. Osama bin Laden is the Saudi-born fugitive Islamic militant leader blamed by the United States for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
His prediction echoes Arabs opposition to and frustration with the war which entered the 12th day yesterday with more allied bombings of Iraq capital Bagdhad, hitting Republican Guards positions and one of President Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces. Egypt, like most Arab countries, publicly opposes the war on Iraq.
Three huge explosions shook central Baghdad yesterday afternoon. One hit a presidential palace used by Saddam's son Qusay, who commands the Guards, sending a mushroom of white smoke from the battered complex.
The strikes came after what sounded like a big artillery barrage on the city's southern edge. Jets screamed low through anti-aircraft fire. Explosions echoed from the south and west.
U.S. troops probing the southern defenses of Baghdad fought Iraqi militia and Republican Guard units at Hindiya, just 50 miles from Saddam's seat of power, in what is believed to be the closest land battle yet to the Iraqi capital.
"We're coming. Where the regime is, we're coming," Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said at Central Command in Qatar, adding that some elite Iraqi units were in serious difficulty.
Fighting also erupted along the Euphrates river near ancient Babylon, on a front about 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, and at least one American was killed near the city of Hilla.
Iraq remained defiant, threatening to turn the desert into a grave for U.S. and British invaders. "With every passing day, they are sinking deeper into the mud of defeat and their losses are increasing," Foreign Minister Naji Sabri declared.
U.S. commanders appeared determined to take the fight to Iraqi militiamen harrying their advance, while hitting regular troops and Republican Guard units blocking routes to Baghdad.
A night missile strike on the Information Ministry knocked local television briefly off the air a day after America's top soldier vowed to "draw the noose tighter" around Baghdad.
But General Richard Myers, head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was no rush to storm the city. "We'll be patient," he said in Washington.
In the north, warplanes bombed targets in and around the city of Mosul. Elsewhere, Brooks said U.S. special forces were "denying freedom of movement throughout the western desert."
South of Baghdad, U.S. forces said many Iraqis were killed near Hilla, while the road to the nearby town of Imam Aiyub was littered with burned out vehicles, blitzed in previous fighting.
"There's still extremely heavy contact right now," said Captain Brad Loudon of the 2nd Battalion 70th Armored Regiment near Imam Aiyub.
Troops used tanks, helicopters and artillery, and called in British and U.S. air strikes against the Iraqis, who hit back with tanks, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
At Hindiya, Iraqi prisoners taken in fighting included an officer who said he was from the Nebuchadnezzar Division of the Republican Guard, thought to have been based much further north.
Brooks said this might indicate that the Iraqis were bringing in reinforcements or replacing losses.
Monday's death near Hilla raised the U.S. casualty toll in the war to at least 46 with another 17 missing.
Britain has 25 dead, one more than in the 1991 Gulf War. Only five have been killed in action, while 15 have died in accidents and five by "friendly fire."
Iraq has said nearly 600 Iraqi civilians have been killed and over 4,500 wounded. It has not listed military casualties.
U.S. troops raced toward Baghdad early in the war, but left behind towns where Iraqi paramilitaries have tried to disrupt supply lines that stretch up to 235 miles from Kuwait.
Some U.S. units have now turned back south to try to quell the resistance, which has proved stronger than some commanders expected. Marines who had been heading north toward Kut and Baghdad retraced their steps yesterday and raided the town of Shatra north of the key city of Nassiriya.
Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire, traveling with the Marines, said they were targeting Iraqi officials commanding lightly armed forces which have attacked U.S. supply convoys.
Among those sought in Shatra was Ali Hassan al-Majid, or "Chemical Ali," who is commanding the southern sector.
Majid, a feared cousin of Saddam, earned his nickname for overseeing the use of poison gas against Kurds in 1988.
British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said yesterday that no senior Iraqi politicians or soldiers had yet defected despite 12 days of bombardment. However, he said some 8,000 Iraqi prisoners of war had been taken.
As U.S. and British troops labor to overcome forces loyal to Saddam across the southern half of Iraq, Western warplanes enjoy complete control of the skies.
Long-range B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers joined forces for the first time in history in the early hours of yesterday to attack communication and command centers, shaking buildings across the city as their bombs struck home.
Worries that a long war in Iraq could derail the global economy hit global stocks yesterday, with the Dow Jones Industrial average tumbling 2.5 percent in early New York trade. The dollar fell and oil prices spiked sharply.
"With no sign of any kind of breakthrough, it looks like a long, slogging war," said Larry Wachtel, market analyst at Prudential Securities. "All I can say is that it's all Iraq all the time and until the war is resolved, there's no 'All clear."'
U.S. military officials have been fending off criticism that they launched the war with insufficient ground strength.
Some U.S. leaders had suggested many Iraqis, particularly in the Shi'ite south, would surrender or stage revolts after decades of repressive rule by Saddam's Baathist party.
But their hopes of a swift victory have faded in the face of tough Iraqi resistance and guerrilla tactics such as a suicide bombing on Saturday that killed four American soldiers.
A British survey showed support for the war had fallen for the first time since it began. A poll on Sunday said 55 percent of Americans felt their government had been too optimistic.
The radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said it had sent would-be suicide bombers to Baghdad, and Iraq said 4,000 willing "martyrs" from across the Arab world were already there. Additional 1000 would be bombers have also signed up according to top Iraqi officials.
Meanwhile Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said yesterday the war against the Coalition is going well and described Iraq's decision to use suicide bombings as heroic.
"When you fight an invader by whatever means available to you, you are not a terrorist; you are a hero," he told the ABC television network.
It came just days after an Iraqi officer killed four US soldiers in a suicide bombing at a checkpoint near Najaf.
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