Iraq retaliates in face of continuing U.S. air strikes
By Christina Jenkins
March 19, 2003 9:00 p.m.
With American missiles pounding Baghdad for the second straight
night, Iraqi forces returned fire in Kuwait and may have set oil
fields on fire in retaliation.
It remains unclear if last night’s assault, which U.S.
military officials said wasn’t the beginning of the massive
air campaign the Pentagon has planned, was successful in killing
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
State-run television denied it, and said the Iraqi dictator had
met with aides during the day. Either way, said Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld, “The days of the Saddam Hussein regime
are numbered.”
He called on Iraqi leaders to surrender ““ and said the
alternative was an attack “of a force and scope and scale …
beyond what has been seen before.”
With more than 250,000 troops, 1,000 combat aircraft and a naval
armada in the Persian Gulf region, administration officials said
the full-scale invasion was just over the horizon.
In the Kuwaiti desert, officials said none of the Iraqi missiles
caused injuries, and one was intercepted by a Patriot missile.
Thousands of U.S. and British troops donned protective gear, but
there was no evidence the missiles carried chemical or biological
weapons.
But it appeared Iraqi troops may have torched several oil fields
in the region. Witnesses in Kuwait about eight miles south of the
border spotted flickering flames on the horizon after a series of
explosions shook buildings in the area and sent farm workers
running outside and shouting in alarm.
The Arab satellite television channel Al-Arabiya reported that
fires had erupted in Iraq’s valuable al-Rumeila field west of
Basra and just north of the Kuwaiti border.
Before the war began, the Pentagon expressed fears that Hussein
had planned to sabotage Iraq’s oil fields by booby-trapping
wells so one person could blow them up.
A loss of oil from Iraq ““ home to the world’s
second-largest reserves ““ could crimp supplies for importing
countries, and deny U.S. and British governments an asset they hope
will help pay for postwar efforts.
In southern Iraq, a U.S. military Special Operations helicopter
made a crash landing, but the crew and elite troops aboard were
rescued, U.S. officials said.
The crash of the MH-53 “Pave Low” special operations
helicopter was the first known loss of a U.S. aircraft in the war
against Iraq. It occurred before U.S. bombing and cruise missile
raids were launched against targets on the outskirts of Baghdad
before dawn, they said.
Also on Thursday, in a victory for strategists who eye Turkish
air space as a necessary door to Iraq’s north end,
Turkey’s parliament granted the U.S. military permission to
use its skies.
It is a measure that would make it easier for U.S. heavy bombers
based in Europe to strike Iraq, and for U.S. transport and supply
aircraft to move troops and war material to the region.
Parliament, however, stopped short of allowing U.S. warplanes to
use its bases or refuel in the country.
Meanwhile, French President Jacques Chirac urged U.S.-led forces
attacking Iraq to avoid a “humanitarian catastrophe”
and insisted Thursday that only the United Nations, not individual
countries, should make the determination to go to war.
The French government has been a strident opponent of military
action in Iraq, and had threatened to veto a U.S.-backed resolution
in the United Nations that would have authorized war.
“France regrets this action taken without approval of the
United Nations,” Chirac said in a brief televised speech.
“We hope these operations will be as rapid and least deadly
as possible, and that they don’t lead to a humanitarian
catastrophe.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded Thursday that the
United States end the attack quickly, and that the use of military
force was not justified.
In China, where state-run media carried President Bush’s
speech announcing war live, Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan
called for the attack on Iraq to stop.
With reports from The Associated Press.
