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Journalism of Courage
When US tanks rumbled into this town on the Euphrates river, irregular Iraqi forces set up sniper nests up and down the main street, opening fire from doors, windows, market stalls and patches of open ground.
A crimson sunset painted the street red and visibility fell to less than five metres as a swirling sand and dust storm kicked up when the guerrilla units attacked.
US officers said fighters in minivans, pick-up trucks and cars drove straight at the oncoming tanks. Others took to canoes, rowing down the river and trying to fix explosives to the main bridge.
But the guerrilla-style forces were vastly outgunned by the tanks of the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, and hundreds of Iraqis have died in this town over the past four days.
In Kifl, which lies North of Najaf and about 130 km south of Baghdad, the strategy may have slowed the US forces, but only at an extremely high cost. Some US soldiers estimate that at least 1,000 Iraqis were killed here since the fighting began at dusk on Wednesday, and everyone puts the number in the hundreds. Officers say just one US soldier has died.
The officers said the tank unit fired two 120-mm high-velocity depleted uranium rounds straight down the main road, creating a powerful vacuum that literally sucked guerrillas out from their hideaways into the street, where they were shot down by small-arms fire or run over by the tanks.
‘‘It was mad chaos like you cannot imagine,’’ said the tank unit’s commander, who identified himself as ‘Cobra 6’ as he did not want friends and neighbours back home to know what he had been through.
‘‘We took a lot of fire, and we gave a lot of fire,’’ he said. ‘‘You couldn’t see anything except all those hues of red and the sound of fire from all sides. It was not earthly. I’ll have nightmares about it.’’
Dozens of bodies still littered the streets on Saturday. Some were wrapped in blue and black body bags, but others were still out in the open, rotting in the midday sun. Several spilled out of their charred and shattered cars and trucks, burned beyond recognition.
Iraq’s efforts to stall the US military advance towards Baghdad appear to include putting elite officers in with irregular paramilitary or guerrilla structures at strategic points.
Sporadic mortar fire and bursts of sniper fire kept US troops alert in the town late on Saturday, but officers said most of the resistance in the town had been overcome. The main danger was now posed by an artillery unit about 16 km to the North.
‘‘I’m sure there are still some knuckleheads in the town, but the real problem is what’s outside,’’ said Colonel Joseph Anderson of the 101st Airborne Division, which moved in to help secure Kifl on Saturday.
Wave after wave of Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries had setup mortar positions at an old brick factory on the edge of town, getting dropped off from civilian vehicles at a large tree that US forces here now call the ‘‘Gateway to Hell’’.
US officers said they had destroyed up to 50 vehicles making drop-offs there, adding the brick factory, like much of Kifl, was now virtually abandoned.
The canoes lie empty on the river beds and only US soldiers walk up and down the town’s main streets.
Some families were still seen in their homes on the edge of town on Saturday as US tanks and trucks rolled by with nervous soldiers looking out over the fields, their guns loaded for any new guerrilla threat. (Reuters)
