[This story was updated on 03.22.03 at 7:41 p.m. ET.]
Air raid sirens sounded over Baghdad for the second straight night as the capital city was once again pounded with bombs and missiles.
The intensity was noticeably less severe than Friday night's strike, in which a flurry of explosions signaled the coalition's intimidating and damaging "shock & awe" campaign, although 1,000 fighter sorties are expected to be launched before the third day of fighting concludes, U.S. government officials said.
Flashes of anti-aircraft fire aimed at U.S. jets were visible in televised images of the city, as many of the same targets from Friday night's strike were hit again. After the initial damage was assessed, the decision was made to inflict further damage on Iraq's intelligence headquarters and a presidential palace. Lights went out in parts of the city and senior Iraqi leadership officials were seen leaving, according to Fox News.
Six of Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard divisions, based inside and on the outskirts of Baghdad, are also targets.
Bombs and missiles also fell on Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, and air attacks struck the city of Kirkuk in an attempt to knock out anti-aircraft batteries and other Iraqi air defenses. If the mission in Kirkuk is successful, coalition forces will have effectively nullified Iraq's air capabilities in the region, Fox News reported.
According to the Kurdish government, approximately 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles hit the northern bases of the militant Islamic group Ansar al-Islam, which the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida. About 220 people are believed to have been killed in the attack.
Kurdish officials believe the same group to be responsible for killing at least five people, including an Australian journalist working for ABC TV, with a car bomb in Halabja on Saturday. Eight other people were injured when the bomb exploded at a road checkpoint.
Meanwhile, U.S. ground troops are about 150 miles deep into Iraq and have crossed the Euphrates River, located between Basra and Baghdad in southern Iraq, in their continued march toward the capital, it was announced at a Pentagon press briefing Saturday afternoon ET. (Click for a map of the battlefield.) Forces also captured Nasiriya, northwest of Basra. Iraqi TV had reported U.S. and U.K. forces clashed with Iraqi troops north of Basra, though it couldn't be confirmed by U.S. officials at press time.
Four U.S. soldiers were wounded Saturday in central Iraq, according to the Pentagon. Traveling in Humvees on a reconnaissance mission, the scouts were hit with rocket-propelled grenades. It was unclear how many vehicles were in the convoy.
News reports that said the Marines were killed proved to be inaccurate, according to an investigation by the 3rd Infantry Division, where the soldiers originated. A reporter from Britain's Sky TV, who was embedded with the division, initially thought the soldiers were killed in the attack, and his report had been picked up by several news organizations.
Three other journalists were missing and another wounded, according to the international activist organization Reporters Without Borders. The four reporters, all working for British Independent Television News, came under fire as they drove in unmarked vehicles toward Basra, away from any military convoy.
These reports on allied casualties follow the news that seven troops — six Brits and one American, Navy Lt. Thomas Mullen Adams, 27, of La Mesa, California — were killed Saturday morning (ET) when two Royal Navy helicopters collided over the Persian Gulf. On Friday, coalition forces reported the first combat fatalities as two Marines, Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, 22, of Los Angeles, and 2nd Lt. Therrel S. Childers, 30, of Harrison, Mississippi, who were killed in southern Iraq. A total of 21 fatalities, 19 of which have come in noncombat incidents, have been reported by U.S. and British forces.
Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke began Saturday's press conference by offering her condolences to the families of the U.S. casualties, including the four Marines who were killed when their CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter went down Thursday due to mechanical problems: Maj. Jay Thomas Aubin, 36, of Waterville, Maine; Capt. Ryan Anthony Beaupre, 30, of Bloomington, Illinois; Cpl. Brian Matthew Kennedy, 25, of Houston; and Staff Sgt. Kendall Damon Watersbey, 29, of Baltimore.
All over Iraq, soldiers have surrendered to coalition forces. Britain's Chief of Defense, Adm. Michael Boyce, told journalists Saturday morning that between 8,000 and 10,000 soldiers surrendered Friday near the southern city of Basra, Iraq's second largest city.
However, in his own press conference later Saturday morning at the coalition command headquarters in Qatar, Gen. Tommy Franks said only 1,000 to 2,000 Iraqi troops had surrendered.
Some of those who gave up were following instructions printed on the millions of leaflets dropped over the country prior to the onset of the conflict, coalition officials said. The fliers told the Iraqis that if they laid down their arms when confronted by coalition troops, they would be spared to live in a free Iraq.
Despite the mass surrenders, opposition from Iraqi soldiers has been greater than expected, especially around the strategically key city of Basra, where bombs fell on tanks near bridges outside the town, according to the Associated Press. After a gun battle, Marines captured the city's airport. Coalition forces have surrounded Basra, according to Fox News, and were trying to bring the city of 1.3 million under control at press time. Cobra attack helicopters, attack jets, tanks and 155 mm howitzers were paving the way for ground troops.
U.S. and British troops were reportedly searching homes to root out small remaining pockets of resistance in Umm Qasr, a previously captured small port town in southern Iraq. Some of the Iraqi holdouts were dressed as civilians when they fired at coalition troops.
It's believed that the soldiers who have not yet surrendered are more afraid of Saddam Hussein's vengeance than they are of coalition forces.
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