US readies for urban combat in Baghdad

3.00pm

WASHINGTON - US attack jets, air controllers and unmanned spy planes are on 24-hour alert over Baghdad to support American troops in what could become bloody urban combat, the commander of the air war against Iraq says.

US Air Force Lt Gen Michael "Buzz" Moseley told Pentagon reporters from his headquarters in Saudi Arabia that dozens of fighters and bombers were stacked up over Baghdad as US-led ground forces virtually ringed the capital.

If remnants of battered Republican Guards divisions and other Iraqi military units that have filtered into Baghdad chose to fight, Moseley said, warplanes were ready to launch a range of precision bombs and rockets day and night in an aerial form of house-to-house combat.

"Today, we began to work a concept of operations for urban CAS (combat air support)," he told reporters. "We will get through this. We will continue to kill those guys until they give up."

"The trick, if you have to do this, is to use the smallest weapon possible to get the maximum effect, so that you don't create unnecessary loss of civilian life or property," Moseley said as some US troops were reported moving into the city in probing actions.

Moseley said the air weapons available even included 227 kg laser-guided bombs without explosive warheads that could destroy rooms within houses by sheer impact without causing damage to nearby buildings or killing innocent civilians.

The air support plan, he said, included "forward airborne controllers over the city 24 hours a day and multiple sets of fighters with multiple munitions options."

"We are very, very sensitive to not creating a mess inside the city," Moseley told reporters, adding that the air power available included virtually every type of aircraft, from big bombers to F-15, F-16 and F-18 fighters jets along with armed drones.

He cautioned that Baghdad's vaunted air defences had been badly degraded but not obliterated.

Illustrating the dominance of Western air power, Moseley told reporters that one unmanned "Predator" spy drone had flown over Baghdad for 12 straight hours on Friday night without being shot down.

He said high-flying unmanned "Global Hawk" and manned U-two spy planes were also operating over the capital.

Discussing previously undisclosed details of the air operation, in which more than 13,000 bombs and 750 cruise missiles have been used against Iraq, Moseley said US B-2 stealth bombers had at one point flown nonstop from their base in Missouri, and each dropped 80 500-pound bombs on Iraqi troops before returning home.

"The preponderance of the Republican Guard divisions outside of Baghdad are now dead," he said. "I find it interesting when folks say we're softening them up. We're not softening them up, we're killing them."

"It's either we kill them or they give up. There's no way out for these guys," Moseley added.

Meanwhile a loud explosion and distant blasts rattled Baghdad early this morning, ending an eerie four-hour calm, as warplanes again roared overhead.

Earlier, shortly after midnight, two large explosions rocked the centre of the Iraqi capital, followed by the sound of heavy artillery toward the southwest where the US 3rd Infantry Division seized the international airport early on Friday.

"It's been strangely quiet for a while, but we just heard a single loud explosion, a bit out of the center toward the southwest, and we can hear warplanes overhead," said Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul.

Minutes later there were more blasts further away in the same direction.

Nakhoul earlier saw two orange arrows arcing over the capital from the southeast toward the northwest of the city.

Late yesterday, a bomb hit central Baghdad about 100 metres from the Palestine Hotel where many journalists covering the war in Iraq are staying and where Iraq's information ministry briefings have been held.

The hotel is located in a business and residential area, near other hotels and a government communications centre.

Nakhoul said it was unclear whether the bomb targeted anything in the area or was a stray.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf was at the building earlier in the evening giving television interviews.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war