skies, pounding military and government targets during a massive air campaign in Baghdad and other cities mainly in the north Friday and early Saturday, March 22.
In addition a barrage of missiles fired from U.S. and apparently also British war ships rained down on several buildings as part of what top Pentagon officials called the long-awaited air campaign "targeting hundreds of selected leadership and military sites."
Witnesses saw large explosions rocking the Iraqi capital, sending enormous fireballs and plumes of thick smoke rising high over the city. Among the targets hit was once again a presidential palace.
U.S. and British soldiers on land pushed about 160 kilometres into Iraq, capturing key territory in the southern and western parts of the country, but their advance was overshadowed by news that two marines had died in hostile fire.
HELICOPTER CRASHED
Earlier in the day eight British and four American service men were killed when their helicopter crashed in northern Kuwait. Yet, in a newsletter obtained by BosNewsLife, the respected Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said there were indications that the regime was crumbling "at the edges."
It claimed reports from southern Iraq suggested that government employees were refusing to turn up for work and even checkpoints were left unmanned.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the government of Iraq is beginning to lose control of the country. "The confusion of Iraqi officials is growing. Their ability to see what is happening on the battlefield, to communicate with their forces and to control their country is slipping away," the Voice of America (VOA) quoted him as saying.
REGIME "HISTORY"
"They are beginning to realize, I suspect, that the regime is history." In the city of Nasiriya, a donkey wandered through the streets spray-painted with the words: "1,000 Americans, but not one Tikriti" – a reference to Saddam Hussein’s own tribe, and an indication of a possible ethnic conflict.
Local people said it was a sign of the weakness of the regime that the animal was not killed at once, the IWPR reported. Another sign was that they dared speak of the donkey, and the insult to Saddam Hussein, over international telephone lines that are usually closely monitored, IWPR analysts pointed out.
News about the apparent tensions within the regime came as the U.S. military said its bombing campaign was "unprecedented in the history of warfare" and that it would produce "shock and awe." However Iraqi officials denied that Baghdad was about the fall and made clear the regime would continue to fight till the bitter end.
POSTERS DESTROYED
However American forces seemed to receive a moral boost when they were welcomed by dancing citizens, who were seen helping them removing posters from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. U.S. defense officials also said they were pleased that American forces have seized two airfields in Western Iraq without significant resistance.
Officials said the airfields could be sites for storing Iraqi Scud missiles or weapons of mass destruction. Coalition forces have seized the port of Umm Qasr and British soldiers have captured the strategic al Faw peninsula on the Persian Gulf, VOA reported.
U.S. General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said so far, the war is going virtually according to plan. "Clearly we are moving towards our objectives," VOA quoted the general as saying. "We must not get too comfortable. We are basically on our plan and moving towards Baghdad, but there are still many unknowns out there," he added.
