...unconfirmed reports are that Iraqi forces were abandoning airport

NEAR BAGHDAD, Iraq: US army troops pushed through to the southern outskirts of Baghdad last night, encountering four hours of running skirmishes with determined Iraqi fighters. 

Americans were pounding Baghdad’s international airport and unconfirmed reports said Iraqis were abandoning the airport. US forces with the 3rd Infantry Division attacked Saddam International Airport on the southwestern edge of the city late. Tracer rounds raced through the night sky and artillery shells exploded in the air. Reporters embedded with the division quoted field sources as saying the Iraqis were abandoning the airport.

Meanwhile, US commandos raided a presidential palace in a resort area northwest of the city, and the capital was plunged into darkness. At least one US soldier was killed by friendly fire in the hours-long skirmish on Baghdad’s outskirts. Three were wounded by Iraqi fire, and three soldiers collapsed from heat exhaustion as temperatures rose about 32 degrees C (90 degrees F) outdoors and over 38 degrees C (100 degrees F) inside the tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. Southeast of Baghdad, Marine units advanced along the Tigris River. The two rivers run parallel to each other for much of their northwest-to-southeast flow through Iraq, with the Tigris flowing directly through the city proper.

Some Marines from the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment went to a higher state of alert for chemical weapons, with troops almost fully clad in chemical protection suits. Outside the southeastern city of Basra, British troops advanced across a crucial waterway, setting up camp within city’s limits for the first time, British pool reports said. Early Thursday, a group of commandos raided the Thar Thar presidential palace, 55 miles northwest of Baghdad. US Brig Gen Vincent Brooks, in a briefing at US Central Command, said the commandos landed by helicopter in the palace compound after suppressing anti-aircraft fire. They found no leaders in residence, but came away with documents that will be reviewed by intelligence officers, Brooks said.

US officials said only one palace was raided; A Central Command spokesman initially indicated soldiers had entered a palace near the Baghdad airport. “We don’t think that the fighting is over yet,” Brooks said. “There are still options that are open to the regime, including weapons of mass destruction. We take that very seriously.” Iraqi authorities vowed to make a stand, raising the possibility that some units had been pulled into Baghdad for urban warfare rather than risk a head-on clash outside the city. “God willing, we will teach the enemy lessons on the battlefield that it will not forget,” said an Republican Guard commander identified by the Arab-language satellite television Al-Jazeera as commander of the Republican Guard’s Baghdad Division. The officer, whose name was not given, said 17 of his men were killed in the recent combat, but denied US claims that the division had been destroyed.

Thousands of 3rd Infantry Division vehicles moved across the Euphrates River bridge at Musayyib, 55 kilometers (35 miles) due south of Baghdad, passing scores of blown up Iraqi vehicles and dozens of dead bodies. The dead were in uniform — though it was unclear whether they were Republican Guard or regular army units. Dozens of Iraqi soldiers have surrendered. Marine units swept through the Tigris River town of Zubaydiyah, southeast of Baghdad, searching for Iraqi army units, but only finding abandoned bunkers and fighting holes.