US forces move into Baghdad

NEAR BAGHDAD: US armoured forces rolled into Baghdad yesterday, smashing through Iraq's Republican Guard to reach the ultimate destination — at least briefly — of their two-week surge across southern Iraq, US officials said.

Witnesses in Baghdad said they saw no evidence of an incursion and as night fell, the streets were teeming with armed men who have taken positions on major intersections and on main roads leading to the southern, southeastern and western exits of the city. Army tanks were deployed inside the city, together with artillery. On the road to the airport, Iraqi army troops danced on top of what they said were US armoured personnel carriers destroyed in battle on Friday and yesterday. They flashed the "V-for-victory" sign. The US sweep left burning tanks and bodies of Iraqi fighters behind. US officials said the incursion was not an attempt to capture large sections of Baghdad.

Air Force Major General Gene Renuart said, "It was a clear statement of the ability of coalition forces to move into Baghdad at the time and place of their choosing." Though another Central Command officer had said earlier that US forces were in the city to stay, Renuart described only a brief sweep by one unit in and out of the capital. He declined to say if any troops remained inside. Thousands of US troops had reached the outskirts of Baghdad Friday — the 3rd Infantry Division arriving from the southwest and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force from the southeast.

The Iraqi military, in a statement read on satellite television, said US forces were repulsed when they tried to advance on Baghdad from the south. "We were able to chop off their rotten heads," the statement said. Saddam, in a statement read on Iraqi TV by Iraq's Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, urged his men yesterday to charge at the coalition forces "and destroy them".