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CNN Live At Daybreak
Parts of Central Baghdad Erupt into Urban Battlefield
Aired April 08, 2003 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Bill.
It is 5:30 Eastern time right now.
We want to bring you up to date with the latest developments at this hour.
Parts of central Baghdad erupted into an urban battlefield early today, with U.S. tanks and war planes taking on a high rise government building along the Tigris River. One of Al Jazeera Television's reporters was killed by an air strike and a cameraman for Adu Dhabi Television narrowly escaped injury. The Pentagon says U.S. forces "absolutely did not tonight Al Jazeera."
U.S. Marines went into an industrial area in southeast Baghdad looking for a fight and they got one.
CNN's Martin Savidge, embedded with the Marines, says it's a sprawling area of warehouses. Marty reports the Marines had the area surrounded and had a detailed plan for rooting out Iraqi fighters who have taken refuge there.
A U.S. heavy bomber unleashed four tons of high explosives on a Baghdad site where Saddam Hussein, his sons and other Iraqi leaders may have been gathered. CENTCOM says the strike was based on intelligence apparently gained from informants. There is no confirmation on who was at the site, but sources in Baghdad say at least nine people were killed and 13 wounded.
The Pentagon has released video of the fatal blow delivered over the weekend against Iraqi leaders in Basra. The air strike targeted the home of Iraqi general Ali Hassan al-Majid. He is Saddam Hussein's cousin, nicknamed Chemical Ali, the man who allegedly ordered a devastating poison gas attack that killed 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the north back in 1988.
The Arab television station Al Jazeera says one of its journalists was killed when a U.S. air strike hit a Baghdad building housing Arab media. The journalist, identified as Tareq Ayoub, was carried away from the wreckage in a blanket. Another Al Jazeera journalist was injured in the blast. The Pentagon denies it was targeting Al Jazeera.
And we will soon hear from President Bush. He is Northern Ireland meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The two leaders hope to announce an agreement on the U.N.'s role in a post-war Iraq. Their joint news conference is set to begin about 30 minutes from now at 6:00 a.m. Eastern. CNN will bring it to you live.
And the family of Private First Class Jessica Lynch says she is in high spirits. About 15 minutes ago, they wrapped up a press conference from outside of her hospital room in Germany. They say Jessica has not yet spoken about her ordeal as a POW in Iraq. U.S. forces rescued her in a daring raid last week.
We'll go live to the battlefield right now with the Marines and CNN's Martin Savidge. He is now inside Baghdad, as I said. I know the Marines you are with came under attack, but now they're searching, right?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol. Still going through this massive complex of an industrial facility that's located well in the southeast suburbs of Baghdad. The Marine 1st Battalion 7th Marines crossed over into Baghdad outright before the sun came up this morning. No sooner did they get across a bridge and a canal when they came under attack, at least the lead elements did. They were able to return fire, quickly suppress that and then the Marines began forging into, well, basically what was a giant palm grove there and the advanced elements came across a whole stash of Iraqi weaponry that was hidden underneath the tree cover there, including anti-aircraft guns and artillery pieces, as well as loads of ammunition.
This is sort of demolition work that was done on the fly. The Marines have an objective to reach. They couldn't stay long to try to get rid of this equipment. So what they essentially did was run through the area and toss in incendiary grenades or regular grenades, and that would trigger explosions within the artillery pieces and then, as you can hear now, the secondary rounds began going off and it sounded like a whole war breaking out in the middle of that palm grove. Instead, it was just the sound of Iraqi artillery and hardware being destroyed piece by piece by the U.S. Marines.
After that they then moved on, came into this large industrial complex where we are still working and it was here that they did run into some opposition from Iraqi forces. We're not sure who it is, whether its paramilitary or some semblance of the regular military or perhaps even some of the Republican Guard. It was sporadic fighting, at times it was heavy on the part of the Marines, but that's because any time they are fired upon, they make sure that they return fire tenfold compared to what they receive. There were tanks that were working the objectives here, armed personnel carriers, supported by mortar fire, aircraft flying overhead, even occasionally helicopters. So they had plenty on hand to deal with it.
And while they were going street to street, warehouse to warehouse, building to building, then they had also set up a very strong perimeter, again, with armor and again with infantry on the ground, ready to intercept anybody who might have fled.
So the fighting there lasted for about an hour or so. Again, it was sporadic. It was not full on all the time. It has died down pretty much now and what they are doing is going through these warehouses, because there were a number of these buildings that were said to be sensitive in nature, at least that there had been some intelligence that perhaps they were part of an Iraqi weapons program. So the Marines going carefully through all of those buildings now, securing them and trying to find out exactly what is inside -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Martin, I was just curious about something. I'm looking at pictures as Marines go through those sensitive buildings and I notice they're not wearing chemical suits.
SAVIDGE: No, they are not. This apparently is not a concern as far as chemical material to be found there. It was interesting that just down the street from this complex, where it appears the Iraqi Republican Guard were dug in -- they were not there this morning, obviously, when the troops came in -- they did find a large cache of chemical warfare suits, gas masks, rubber boots, rubber gloves and atropine. Atropine is the antidote that you would inject into yourself if you were exposed to any sort of nerve agent.
So large supplies of that on hand for the Iraqi forces. Why they have them, we're not exactly clear. You could certainly take an educated guess. The Iraqi forces, though, had left their facility and their area had come under what appears to have been a pretty strong air attack -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Understand.
Martin Savidge somewhere inside Baghdad with the Marines.
We want to head live to the Pentagon right now because it's a question we're asking again this morning, is Saddam Hussein and his sons dead or alive?
Chris, can you bring you up to date?
CHRIS PLANTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there is no clear answer to that right now, Carol. We do know that yesterday afternoon Baghdad time, about 3:00 p.m. Baghdad time a major air strike was launched against a target in a fairly wealthy residential area of Baghdad, just slightly west of the downtown area. And this was based on intelligence that the U.S. had gathered on the possible whereabouts of Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay.
It was believed, based on apparently a variety of intelligence sources, including human intelligence, which is fairly unusual in situations like this -- it's not clear where this human intelligence came from, whether it was a source inside the Iraqi regime that had some knowledge of the future whereabouts of President Saddam Hussein and his sons or whether it was perhaps U.S. special operations forces that have been tracking the movements of these people. But they did track them to the Al-Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad and called in an air strike.
A B-1 bomber was called in for the job. This is a heavy, long range bomber. It carries a massive bomb load. They did drop four separate 2,000 pound bombs on this target and the videotape of the site shows incredible devastation, a massive crater, clearly an enormous amount of explosive power brought to bear on this site. At this point it's not entirely clear whether Saddam Hussein and his sons were inside the structure at the time, but B-1 bomber and the payload that it can deliver, if anyone was inside the building, it's extremely unlikely that they survived it and the fact is that it may be very difficult to make a determination as to whether they were inside the building, again, because of the size of the massive explosions involved in this.
Now, as you said, this is a residential neighborhood. It's the kind of area that the U.S. and the coalition insist they go to great lengths to avoid striking. So clearly they were confident in this intelligence, confident enough to strike into a residential neighborhood in the hope that decapitation would bring this war to an end much more rapidly. And, of course, the last thing that the allied forces, the coalition forces want to do is inflict civilian casualties in a residential area deliberately and then find that it was without cause.
This is one of these situations that they discuss in military schools and war colleges, what is the tradeoff here? If you can bring the war to an end more rapidly by striking this site and sacrificing some civilians, then in the end, in the final analysis, it reduces the number of civilian casualties should the war have to go on for another couple of weeks. It also reduces the number of military casualties.
So a high level of confidence from senior administration officials that they were there, a risk, and the results are still not in -- Carol.
COSTELLO: I understand.
Chris Plante live from the Pentagon.
And an additional piece of information for you, as a result of that bombing, nine killed on the ground, 13 wounded. Don't know who they are.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired April 8, 2003 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Bill.
It is 5:30 Eastern time right now.
We want to bring you up to date with the latest developments at this hour.
Parts of central Baghdad erupted into an urban battlefield early today, with U.S. tanks and war planes taking on a high rise government building along the Tigris River. One of Al Jazeera Television's reporters was killed by an air strike and a cameraman for Adu Dhabi Television narrowly escaped injury. The Pentagon says U.S. forces "absolutely did not tonight Al Jazeera."
U.S. Marines went into an industrial area in southeast Baghdad looking for a fight and they got one.
CNN's Martin Savidge, embedded with the Marines, says it's a sprawling area of warehouses. Marty reports the Marines had the area surrounded and had a detailed plan for rooting out Iraqi fighters who have taken refuge there.
A U.S. heavy bomber unleashed four tons of high explosives on a Baghdad site where Saddam Hussein, his sons and other Iraqi leaders may have been gathered. CENTCOM says the strike was based on intelligence apparently gained from informants. There is no confirmation on who was at the site, but sources in Baghdad say at least nine people were killed and 13 wounded.
The Pentagon has released video of the fatal blow delivered over the weekend against Iraqi leaders in Basra. The air strike targeted the home of Iraqi general Ali Hassan al-Majid. He is Saddam Hussein's cousin, nicknamed Chemical Ali, the man who allegedly ordered a devastating poison gas attack that killed 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the north back in 1988.
The Arab television station Al Jazeera says one of its journalists was killed when a U.S. air strike hit a Baghdad building housing Arab media. The journalist, identified as Tareq Ayoub, was carried away from the wreckage in a blanket. Another Al Jazeera journalist was injured in the blast. The Pentagon denies it was targeting Al Jazeera.
And we will soon hear from President Bush. He is Northern Ireland meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The two leaders hope to announce an agreement on the U.N.'s role in a post-war Iraq. Their joint news conference is set to begin about 30 minutes from now at 6:00 a.m. Eastern. CNN will bring it to you live.
And the family of Private First Class Jessica Lynch says she is in high spirits. About 15 minutes ago, they wrapped up a press conference from outside of her hospital room in Germany. They say Jessica has not yet spoken about her ordeal as a POW in Iraq. U.S. forces rescued her in a daring raid last week.
We'll go live to the battlefield right now with the Marines and CNN's Martin Savidge. He is now inside Baghdad, as I said. I know the Marines you are with came under attack, but now they're searching, right?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol. Still going through this massive complex of an industrial facility that's located well in the southeast suburbs of Baghdad. The Marine 1st Battalion 7th Marines crossed over into Baghdad outright before the sun came up this morning. No sooner did they get across a bridge and a canal when they came under attack, at least the lead elements did. They were able to return fire, quickly suppress that and then the Marines began forging into, well, basically what was a giant palm grove there and the advanced elements came across a whole stash of Iraqi weaponry that was hidden underneath the tree cover there, including anti-aircraft guns and artillery pieces, as well as loads of ammunition.
This is sort of demolition work that was done on the fly. The Marines have an objective to reach. They couldn't stay long to try to get rid of this equipment. So what they essentially did was run through the area and toss in incendiary grenades or regular grenades, and that would trigger explosions within the artillery pieces and then, as you can hear now, the secondary rounds began going off and it sounded like a whole war breaking out in the middle of that palm grove. Instead, it was just the sound of Iraqi artillery and hardware being destroyed piece by piece by the U.S. Marines.
After that they then moved on, came into this large industrial complex where we are still working and it was here that they did run into some opposition from Iraqi forces. We're not sure who it is, whether its paramilitary or some semblance of the regular military or perhaps even some of the Republican Guard. It was sporadic fighting, at times it was heavy on the part of the Marines, but that's because any time they are fired upon, they make sure that they return fire tenfold compared to what they receive. There were tanks that were working the objectives here, armed personnel carriers, supported by mortar fire, aircraft flying overhead, even occasionally helicopters. So they had plenty on hand to deal with it.
And while they were going street to street, warehouse to warehouse, building to building, then they had also set up a very strong perimeter, again, with armor and again with infantry on the ground, ready to intercept anybody who might have fled.
So the fighting there lasted for about an hour or so. Again, it was sporadic. It was not full on all the time. It has died down pretty much now and what they are doing is going through these warehouses, because there were a number of these buildings that were said to be sensitive in nature, at least that there had been some intelligence that perhaps they were part of an Iraqi weapons program. So the Marines going carefully through all of those buildings now, securing them and trying to find out exactly what is inside -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Martin, I was just curious about something. I'm looking at pictures as Marines go through those sensitive buildings and I notice they're not wearing chemical suits.
SAVIDGE: No, they are not. This apparently is not a concern as far as chemical material to be found there. It was interesting that just down the street from this complex, where it appears the Iraqi Republican Guard were dug in -- they were not there this morning, obviously, when the troops came in -- they did find a large cache of chemical warfare suits, gas masks, rubber boots, rubber gloves and atropine. Atropine is the antidote that you would inject into yourself if you were exposed to any sort of nerve agent.
So large supplies of that on hand for the Iraqi forces. Why they have them, we're not exactly clear. You could certainly take an educated guess. The Iraqi forces, though, had left their facility and their area had come under what appears to have been a pretty strong air attack -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Understand.
Martin Savidge somewhere inside Baghdad with the Marines.
We want to head live to the Pentagon right now because it's a question we're asking again this morning, is Saddam Hussein and his sons dead or alive?
Chris, can you bring you up to date?
CHRIS PLANTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there is no clear answer to that right now, Carol. We do know that yesterday afternoon Baghdad time, about 3:00 p.m. Baghdad time a major air strike was launched against a target in a fairly wealthy residential area of Baghdad, just slightly west of the downtown area. And this was based on intelligence that the U.S. had gathered on the possible whereabouts of Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay.
It was believed, based on apparently a variety of intelligence sources, including human intelligence, which is fairly unusual in situations like this -- it's not clear where this human intelligence came from, whether it was a source inside the Iraqi regime that had some knowledge of the future whereabouts of President Saddam Hussein and his sons or whether it was perhaps U.S. special operations forces that have been tracking the movements of these people. But they did track them to the Al-Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad and called in an air strike.
A B-1 bomber was called in for the job. This is a heavy, long range bomber. It carries a massive bomb load. They did drop four separate 2,000 pound bombs on this target and the videotape of the site shows incredible devastation, a massive crater, clearly an enormous amount of explosive power brought to bear on this site. At this point it's not entirely clear whether Saddam Hussein and his sons were inside the structure at the time, but B-1 bomber and the payload that it can deliver, if anyone was inside the building, it's extremely unlikely that they survived it and the fact is that it may be very difficult to make a determination as to whether they were inside the building, again, because of the size of the massive explosions involved in this.
Now, as you said, this is a residential neighborhood. It's the kind of area that the U.S. and the coalition insist they go to great lengths to avoid striking. So clearly they were confident in this intelligence, confident enough to strike into a residential neighborhood in the hope that decapitation would bring this war to an end much more rapidly. And, of course, the last thing that the allied forces, the coalition forces want to do is inflict civilian casualties in a residential area deliberately and then find that it was without cause.
This is one of these situations that they discuss in military schools and war colleges, what is the tradeoff here? If you can bring the war to an end more rapidly by striking this site and sacrificing some civilians, then in the end, in the final analysis, it reduces the number of civilian casualties should the war have to go on for another couple of weeks. It also reduces the number of military casualties.
So a high level of confidence from senior administration officials that they were there, a risk, and the results are still not in -- Carol.
COSTELLO: I understand.
Chris Plante live from the Pentagon.
And an additional piece of information for you, as a result of that bombing, nine killed on the ground, 13 wounded. Don't know who they are.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
