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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports
Firefight Near Palestine Hotel
Aired April 13, 2003 - 17:00 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.
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: They're free, acting on a tip U.S. Marines find seven American POWs. Their families are ecstatic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want you to know that your son has been found.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I appreciate it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: The last battle, Marines fight Iraqi diehards in Saddam Hussein's hometown. CNN's Brent Sadler and crew got there before them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK, that's gunfire. OK. Under attack, under attack.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: A stunning victory at hand, but still undeclared. A commander talks of his toughest moments.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS, CENTRAL COMMAND: The times that are the worst are when we confirm that we've had people killed in this war.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: Ahead my conversation with General Tommy Franks on this, day 25 of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: CNN live this hour, WOLF BLITZER REPORTS. With correspondents from around the world. WOLF BLITZER REPORTS starts now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Good evening from Doha, Qatar. This is the temporary headquarters of General Tommy Franks and his Central Command. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting live.
Seven Americans taken prisoner of war early on in the conflict. They're now out of Iraq. Their ordeal is over, their freedom a matter of serendipity.
Good luck, acted upon with lightning speed, it didn't begin as a rescue operation. U.S. Marine units were approaching Tikrit preparing for the battle for that city when a Marine reconnaissance battalion got to the nearby town of Samarra, a policeman asked them if they'd comfort for the prisoners.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Iraqis came up to American military and said that there are seven Americans at this location. And it was about, oh, six or eight kilometers south of Tikrit, and that you should go get the. And they did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: The Marines were led to a building in Samarra guarded by Iraqi soldiers who had been abandoned by commanders. The prisoners were promptly handed over. Reporter Matthew Fisher of the "National Post" of Canada was in the area.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATHEW FISHER, "NATIONAL POST": The Americans, the Marines were astonished. They were taken and found the prisoners, and immediately they broke into tears. There was an incredible joy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: As the news trickled out after 7:00 Eastern time this morning, CNN's Bob Franken was among the first with word of the rescue and the prisoners' condition.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We have now confirmed the number is seven. And we also have new information, as you can imagine this is trickling out, we are now told that two of them suffered gunshot wounds. We do not know the extent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: The two wounded POWs were able to walk under their own power. All the former prisoners and their Iraqi guards were taken to Kuwait where they will be debriefed. The pictures of these seven young people have become familiar to us over the past three weeks. Two of them, Army Chief Warrant Officers Ronald Young and David Williams were captured when their Apache helicopter went down south of Baghdad on March 24th. The other five were from the now well known Army 507th Maintenance Company, PFCs Jessica Lynch's unit based in Fort Bliss, Texas. Sergeant James Riley, Private First Class Patrick Miller, Specialist Edgar Hernandez, Joseph Hudson and Shoshana Johnson captured after their unit was ambushed near Nasiriya three weeks ago today. Now the families of all seven finally seeing new pictures of their loved ones. As you can imagine, it's a very, very joyous occasion for the families of these soldiers. We have reporters with some of them. CNN's Susan Candiotti is in Georgia. CNN's Whitney Casey is in New Jersey. Whitney, let's begin with you. Go ahead.
WHITNEY CASEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, they've been here all day. And they've said he's stubborn and he's a work alcoholic. And they just got off the phone with their son for the very first time since February. So with no further ado let's hear what he had to say. Jane and Athol Riley. You were just on the phone with your son James for the first time. First of all, I know you sort of said kind of, satirically, that he's tired of chicken and rice and what else.
JANE RILEY, JAMES RILEY'S MOTHER: That's what he said.
CASEY: He said that.
J. RILEY: Yes, he said no chicken, no rice. He didn't tell me what else he wanted to eat.
CASEY: What else did he say?
J. RILEY: That he was tired and there was a lot of stuff going through his mind, which I would imagine there would be. And, basically, that was it.
CASEY: Before we have some video of you getting on the phone, and before you were about to speak with him, you had a conversation with an officer there that was near your son. And there was a delicate subject that you had to talk about, and delicate in terms of the fact that even with this emotion, the euphoria is mixed with a bit of pain because of your daughter's death. Your daughter died three days after you found out, three days before? So tell us what you find out and then you tell your son. It was the first time he found out.
J. RILEY: They didn't want us to tell him. But then he asked how his sister was. So then when we completed the conversation, I said -- I'm sorry, I don't know his rank, last name is Craft (ph) ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Captain.
J. RILEY: ... did we have -- captain he says.
CASEY: It's okay. It's been a long day for this family.
J. RILEY: Anyway, so we wanted to speak to him again, so we did. So then we told him that he had asked about her and we had lied and told him ...
ATHOL RILEY, FATHER OF JAMES RILEY: Well, we didn't answer.
J. RILEY: We didn't lie lie, we didn't really answer. We just said she is asleep, which she is permanently. So then he said we may as well tell him.
CASEY: Then you told him. A. RILEY: I did.
J. RILEY: Then my husband told him. And I just put my three cents in.
CASEY: It must have been really hard.
A. RILEY: Well, he already knew that she was sick. And as I explained, the last couple of weeks, she was only kept alive by machine. So that certainly was no way to live.
CASEY: But your son was happy?
A. RILEY. Yes, he's happy ...
J. RILEY: He sounded happy.
A. RILEY: Happy.
J. RILEY: Tired.
A. RILEY: He said that he wished it had never happened, but it did so he's just got to make the best of it.
CASEY: And you guys have been great. I'm going to let you move on along and get back in, and really get back to the feeling of talking to your son. But thank you so much. And Wolf, we're going to toss it back to you, because we're going to let this family move on with their life hopefully. And they look forward to their son coming home. And they also say right when he comes home they're going to put him to work. And some things around the house need fixing, so back to normal.
BLITZER: All right, Whitney Casey with a very, very happy family. Bittersweet to a certain degree, as you point, out but we're happy for the family as well. Sergeant James Riley will be returning to New Jersey, probably sooner rather than later.
Let's now join Susan Candiotti. She is in Georgia with another very, very happy family, the family of Army pilot Ronald Young, Jr. - Susan.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Wolf. It's been a roller coaster ride for this family since this ordeal began three weeks ago, but now finally it is nearing an end. Certainly with wonderful news today, I'm joined now by the parents of Ronald Young, Kaye Young and his father Ronald Young, Sr. Now 15 minutes ago, you got off the phone with your son. Kaye, a mother gets the first crack to talk to her son. You did first. What did you say to him and he to you?
KAYE YOUNG, RONALD YOUNG JR.'S MOTHER: I don't know. I told him that I said hey. He said, how you all doing? And I said we're fine. And I told him I loved him and that we missed him and we've been praying for him. And I don't know, it was just ...
CANDIOTTI: How did he say he was feeling? K. YOUNG: He said he was feeling good. He said he was fine.
CANDIOTTI: And, Ron, you had a chance to ask him too how he was treated?
RON YOUNG SR., RONALD YOUNG JR.'s FATHER: Well, I just asked him, did they feed him pretty good while he was over there. He said yeah, right. He said he had diarrhea from the water over there and he lost 20 pounds. I also asked him, I said, well, they're giving you something to eat now aren't they? He said, oh, yeah, these guys are really treating us right.
CANDIOTTI: Did you have any sense that he has any idea about the amount of attention that is on him now?
K. YOUNG: No, he doesn't at all. Matter of fact, he said, well, who's there, because he could hear the noise in the background, everybody cheering when he answered the phone. And he has no idea.
R. YOUNG, SR: I don't think he does.
K. YOUNG: None.
R. YOUNG SR: Which is good.
CANDIOTTI: Exactly. I know you told him that when you have a chance to see him next, you're going to do what?
K. YOUNG: I'm going to sit and hug him for about a half an hour. He said great.
CANDIOTTI: He can't wait for that. And as a father, I know, did you have a chance to say anything else to him and exchange with him ...
R. YOUNG, JR: Not a whole lot. The phone was going dead when I finally got to talk to him, but that's about the main gist of my conversation with him. Like I told him, I said, well, hang in there. I said, we sure do miss you. He said, well, I miss you too.
CANDIOTTI: Overall, what has this day been like for you?
R. YOUNG, SR: It's been the greatest day in my life. That's what it's been for me. It's just like a dream come true. It really has.
CANDIOTTI: And, as you said, when you get a chance to see him and you, Kaye, hug him, and you the father give him a talking to about continuing on, I'm sure he'd probably love to keep on flying, what do you think about that?
R. YOUNG SR: Well, I hope he'll take a little break from it before he gets right back in there. And I don't know, I don't know what the Army has in store for him or plans for him, or nothing else. So I don't believe that he would probably go right back into it, but again, you can never tell I guess. Well, he'll do whatever he's ordered to do. K. YOUNG: We were told they may send him for a little awhile. And they may send him back over there. But you know, I'm not worried about going -- this couldn't happen twice.
CANDIOTTI: And they told you he'll be coming home to the United States fairly soon?
K. YOUNG: Right.
R. YOUNG, SR: Yeah, uh-huh.
K. YOUNG: He'll be here maybe in the next few days, three or four days.
R. YOUNG: I hope. I'd like to see him. I really would.
CANDIOTTI: And to those who rescued him?
R. YOUNG, SR: Thanks, thanks for everything.
K. YOUNG: You know I just had a call from one of the fathers of one of the sons that rescued him. And he said I did not know, his last name was Reed. It was Carrie Reed, and father and son had the same name. And he said that he did not know if his son was all right until he realized that they were rescuing Ron and the other guys. And he told me how happy he was to know that his son's all right. So there's another blessing that's come out of this.
R. YOUNG, SR: See, I got a call from a Briar family that their son was in on the rescue too. He was in that first layer Marine division. I'm not exactly sure what division, 4th. It was the 4th Delta ...
K. YOUNG: It doesn't matter.
R. YOUNG, SR: Anyway. But he said, he talked to me quite awhile. And he was just, you know, thankful that things went like they were and, you know ...
CANDIOTTI: Did he know any of the details?
R. YOUNG, SR: No, he really didn't know nothing more than we did, because he saw it on television. But he said that he just wanted to talk to us and tell us how much he -- how appreciative he was for the sacrifice that all the guys were making over there. And you know, I told him I watched too. And I would forever be indebted to his son for bringing him home, and I feel that way too. I feel like that's the way you've got to feel about this because they did go in there and get them. And it said on thing, what really got me, it said on the news that they had applauded them, whenever they got them out of there. And, you know, I tell you what, I know it was a good feeling for all of them just to get away from that, I'm sure.
CANDIOTTI: Well, thank you very much for joining us. And we also know that you received good news that at least two of you will be able to fly over there to Washington to see him in person when he arrives at Walter Read Hospital. And, additionally, I know other people are trying to kick in extra funds for, perhaps, other family members who might be able to go as well. You have two other sons, and two daughters and a lot of other family members, as well.
R. YOUNG SR: That's right.
CANDIOTTI: Our best wishes to you.
K. YOUNG: Thank you.
CANDIOTTI: Thank you very much.
K. YOUNG: Everybody's been so kind and we love you all. And we love everyone that has prayed for us and kept us in their prayers. And I will just never be able to repay this country.
CANDIOTTI: Thank you for letting us be a part of your lives. I appreciate it. All the best to you and to your son.
And so, pretty soon they'll be heading up to Washington, clearly a very happy family here, and a lot of celebrations to come. Back to you, Wolf.
BLITZER: Susan Candiotti, a happy flight from Georgia to the nation's capital in Washington, D.C. Thanks very much, Susan. Congratulate those family members from all of us, as well.
Even while Susan was speaking with those loved ones, a reminder that the war is not yet over, certainly not even in Baghdad. Within the past few minutes, we've seen some flares over Baghdad, not far from the Palestine Hotel. It's become a familiar landmark in recent days. That's where most of the international correspondents are based. Looks like there's another firefight going on there. We'll have a live report coming up from Baghdad later this hour.
In the meantime, more on those seven freed POWs. We saw happy families in New Jersey, and Georgia. In Texas, an especially happy family, the family of Shoshana Johnson. CNN's Ed Lavandera is in El Paso.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ken Krueger (ph) used to serve in the Army with Shoshana Johnson's father. As soon as he heard the news that is buddy's daughter had been rescued, he drove right over to celebrate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yee-haw!
LAVANDERA: For three weeks, the Johnson family had waited for word about 30-year-old Shoshana. Two days ago, the family attended a memorial service at Fort Bliss for nine of her fellow soldiers killed in an early morning ambush in southern Iraq. The Johnson family held on to hope. They've described Shoshana as a fighter who's always made it through the toughest times. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are ecstatic that not only she is safe, but all the POWs are back in the U.S.'s hands. We thank God for watching over them. We are very grateful for all the worldwide prayers.
LAVANDERA: Johnson is the daughter of a Gulf War veteran. She joined the Army five years ago working as a chef for the 507th Maintenance Company. Now her family and friends can prepare for a hero's return and one of Shoshana's home cooked meals.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on home soon, Shoshana!
LAVANDERA (on camera): The day after Shoshana Johnson was taken as a prisoner of war, one of the Johnson family neighbors had these signs made up, "Shana, you're our hero." And if you look across the street at the Johnson family home, it says "Bring Shoshana home." A simple prayer that they've been praying for three weeks now. And it looks like that dream will be coming true.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, El Paso, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: And for more on the rescued POWs, please join us tonight for a CNN special 8:00 p.m. Easter, 5:00 Pacific. That will be a one- hour special "The Rescued POWs."
The battle for Saddam Hussein's hometown. It was a dramatic development. Earlier today, a CNN crew comes under fire on the way out. Then the real fighting begins. We'll get the latest on the last major holdout in Iraq.
Also, restoring order where there was disorder. Baghdad's uphill road to stability.
And General Tommy Franks, the man behind the Iraqi war plan talks to me one-on-one. Is it time to declare victory? Find out what he has to say.
But first, these images of absolute joy shot as families of the POWs got the very good news.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SADLER: OK, that's gunfire. OK, we've just come under attack. Under attack. We're okay. We're okay. Under fire. That confirms.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: CNN's Brent Sadler had a harrowing experience earlier today in Tikrit.
But we have some breaking news we want to report. This just in from our senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre. One of Saddam Hussein's half brothers, half brothers is now in U.S. custody after attempting to escape along the border to Syria. This is what a U.S. official is telling CNN's Jamie McIntyre. You are looking at a picture of Watban Ibrahim Hasan Al-Tikriti. He's the half brother, one of the half brothers, of Saddam Hussein. He was listed among the top 55 most wanted Iraqi leaders by the U.S. Central Command here in Doha, Qatar, only yesterday.
Let's get some more details now. Jamie McIntyre is standing by live at the Pentagon - Jamie.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, we are just confirmed from a U.S. official that they believe they do, in fact, have this man who is identified as one of Saddam Hussein's half brothers in custody. It's not clear whether he was captured by U.S. forces or captured by someone else and turned over to the U.S. forces. We're told that he was brought into custody trying to cross the border into Syria. And U.S. officials believe that there may be a number of senior Iraqi leaders who are on that top 55 list of most wanted who may have crossed into Syria, emphasis on the "may." A senior intelligence official told me today they're not sure anyone is there for certain.
But they do believe that Syria is harboring some of the Iraqi leadership. As one official said to me, perhaps not any names you would recognize. But this does appear to be one of Saddam Hussein's half brothers. He is also, another half brother of Saddam Hussein was also targeted in a strike earlier this month. And the list also includes another individual who's listed as Saddam Hussein's maternal half brother. So at this point, it does appear that at least one of the 55 most wanted is in U.S. custody, according to this U.S. official - Wolf.
BLITZER: Very interesting, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon. We'll be standing by to get some more details from you. Of course, Jamie McIntyre, our senior Pentagon correspondent.
The U.S. Marines, CNN has now confirmed, have indeed moved into the ancestral hometown of the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, that hometown namely being Tikrit. CNN's Brent Sadler was also there earlier today, had a little bit of a harrowing experience, himself. Brent is joining us now live from nearby Erbil - Brent.
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Wolf. Yes, indeed. The U.S. Marines have now advanced to Tikrit. They have already engaged Iraqis defending that city. We're not quite sure where the Marines are located at the moment, but certainly there have been firefights around the city. Let me take you back before the Marines arrived. We have maneuvered ourselves, the previous 24 hours, to be able to get to the outskirts of Tikrit. And first of all, we were able to get a really close up view of some of the major military complexes that are around Tikrit, that have been the subject of intense coalition bombing in the buildup to this Marine advance on the ancestral hometown of Saddam Hussein.
Vast warehouses filled with ammunition, packed with armored vehicles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, a lot of it intact. but a lot of it also dilapidated after years of neglect and under funding of the Iraqi army as a result of the crippling sanctions over the past 12 years. It was also interesting that we were able to get inside very easily. There were no guards, no defenses. Inside a Republican Guard headquarters of a tank unit, it was interesting there to see that all the heavy equipment, all the fighting machines had been moved. We don't know if it was at the beginning of the coalition campaign almost a month ago, or just before this Marine move against Tikrit.
What we do know is the Marines firepower took out five advancing Republican Guard tanks towards them. And this after a very difficult time when we got inside Tikrit and came under gunfire, as you know. We got in there, got out quickly, but not before vehicles were riddled with gunfire. No serious injuries, thankfully - Wolf.
BLITZER: Brent, you say no serious injuries. There were some minor injuries, maybe briefly tell us about that.
SADLER: Our driver certainly sustained a head wound that required bandaging at the scene. The vehicle here was riddled with half a dozen bullets on this one. The other vehicle was also hit. Our producer Maria Fleet was wearing a flack jacket, part of our CNN standard training we go through. That took a shot on the right shoulder. The flack jacket absorbed it. The bullet bounced off. Maria Fleet is fine. Nobody seriously injured.
BLITZER: Thank God for that flack jacket. Brent Sadler with our team in northern Iraq, in Erbil, lived through quite an ordeal today. Brent was cool, though, under fire. Appreciate it very much, Brent. Thank you.
Meanwhile let's go back to Baghdad right now. We'll show you some pictures of what's going on. A firefight in downtown Baghdad, the center of the city. Looking at these live pictures of the flares in the Iraqi capital, right now. It looks like this firefight is still underway. We're told it's not far from the Palestine Hotel. That's the hotel, of course, that houses so many of the international reporters who have now gathered on the Iraqi capital. I believe CNN's Rula Amin is joining us now live with what she -- actually, we'll go to Rula Amin right after a quick commercial break. We'll get a live update what's happening on the streets of Baghdad. And also later, my interview with the commander of Operations Iraqi Freedom, General Tommy Franks. We spent time together earlier today at Camp al-Saliyah, the temporary headquarters of the Central Command. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: You're looking at live pictures of downtown Baghdad, a city still with considerable amount of trouble. There's a firefight going on not far from the Palestine Hotel. That's the hotel where so many of the foreign press are based.
CNN's Rula Amin is at the Palestine Hotel. She is joining us now live on the phone.
Rula, from your vantage point, tell us what you see and what you hear. What's going on? RULA AMIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, we are on the roof of the Palestine Hotel. But we can't be on camera because we were asked by the soldiers to turn all the lights off, including the mosque lights. The firefight seems to take place right at the circle outside the Palestine Hotel. We heard some sniper shots, then there were more shots coming from the Marine side. They were very close to us. And then we saw some Marines firing some flare shots, obviously, trying to pinpoint where the fire was coming at, from where was the fire coming at them from. And they were trying to find those guys.
Now, through different in the last probably half an hour, we heard many shots. Then it's quiet, then it's back again. We probably can hear it now. We can replay that tape for you. If you still have it. If you don't, again, it's outside the Palestine Hotel. Throughout the day, there are sporadic firefights throughout Baghdad, but again, they are sporadic. The Marines are saying they are facing little resistance, mostly unorganized resistance to the Marines' presence here so far.
Again, with the security situation so unstable, many residents are staying off the streets at night, and sometimes most of the day. As chaos is still in Baghdad, people are trying hard to find a way how to cope with it. At the same time, for the first time in years, Iraqis are trying to make their voices heard. We have seen today different groups trying to express its wishes on how the future of Iraq should be. Some at the mosque were calling for an Islamic republic. They were asking that Islam should be the rule here. The Islamic code should rule people's lives here.
We saw other people calling on the Marines to stop the looters, and actually protesting the fact that the Marines are not stopping the looters. Others were calling - saying, down, down (UNINTELLIGIBLE). So it's different voices. It's small groups, but most of them, again, for the first time, it's the first time in decades that they are able to go on the streets and make their voices heard, express their wishes, demonstrate, protest. It's very significant to see these scenes in Baghdad, and so early after so little time, after Saddam Hussein had fell - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, how unusual is it to have this kind of a firefight so close to the Palestinian Hotel, not because it's the Palestine Hotel where the foreign press are based, but because U.S. Marines are at that hotel and around that hotel. And earlier we thought we were led to believe that it was relatively secure because the Marines were there. Is this will extraordinary what's going on right now?
AMIN: No, actually we have witnessed such firefights in the past few days. Just yesterday, there was some at noon, even heavier firefights. But the Marines seem to be, when you look at them here at the hotel, coming down the elevator, outside the gates, even on the streets in the circle, they seem to be relaxed. They feel that they have been able to control Baghdad one way or another, that all these firefights, all these shooting that's coming at them is actually very sporadic, very amateurish, and they can control it.
We spoke to one U.S. Marine today. He was on the streets. We were talking to him about the totally different story. And he was talking to his family on the phone, and they were trying to make sure that he's safe. And we could hear him safe, "I'm safe, no more shooting, they're not shooting at us again. And they can't get us." So it seems that the Marines here feel that they have done some pretty good job in securing the place for themselves, that there's not significant danger. And today we did hear from some U.S. officials saying it's not organized resistance that probably, so far, they have overcome most of the solid, real danger resistance that they could have envisioned. And so, these firefighters working hard to eliminate it.
We do know there are still some Arab volunteers. Those Arab volunteers came to Baghdad hoping to fight along with the Iraqi army in order to fight against the Americans to defend Iraq. However, the Iraqi army didn't fight in Baghdad. And they ended up here in Baghdad most of the time alone without Iraqi officers, and they don't note streets. But still, they still are holding on to their guns. And many times we did see Iraqis going to the Marines to tip them off on where these Arab volunteers are in order to catch them - Wolf.
BLITZER: Has there been any decrease, as far as you can tell, Rula, and we'll continue to show our viewers these live pictures of downtown Baghdad right now, not far from the Palestine Hotel. This is the center of the city close to where U.S. Marines, apparently, are pretty much in control, at least of this section of Baghdad. As far as you can tell, Rula, has there been a significant decrease in the amount of looting that we've seen in the Iraqi capital as compared to a few days ago?
AMIN: I wouldn't say there is significant decrease, but I would say there is more resistance to this looting. You have been seeing more substantial attempts by residents of Baghdad in order to stop the looters. People in different neighborhoods, just regular civilians, picking up arms, erecting barricades in their own neighborhoods stopping the looters. And in some cases, they were even stopping looters who were not coming to their own neighborhoods, just passing by, stopping them, confiscating their spoils and gathering all these spoils at the mosque. And they say they will return it to the next authority in Baghdad.
We also do know that the Marines today did arrest some looters, but still for most residents in Baghdad, it's not enough. Many of them are very happy that Saddam Hussein is gone, but they are very concerned about the chaos. And they say, it's the Marines, it's the U.S. who has removed Saddam Hussein. And they feel they should play some kind of role in order to put law and order back to Iraq - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, what do you see? What do you hear right now, if you can tell our viewers about this firefight near where you are, the Palestine Hotel? Is there anything you can make out from your vantage point on the roof of that building?
AMIN: Well, I'll tell you from the roof from, from where I'm standing, we can see the circle right outside the hotel. And we can see some U.S. Marines there walking around. They're not running, not panicking, but we do see them moving around there. And it's very quiet now. However, just a few minutes ago, it was really strong firefight very, very close to us. And all the lights, most of the lights on this roof where I'm standing, so many journalists are here doing live shots reporting the story. All of them have put their lights off, many of them, including us, put their flack jackets on, because it's really very close. And you never know where the fire is coming from. So one has to be very careful - Wolf.
BLITZER: Everybody I assume is walking around ...
AMIN: Now, hear that.
BLITZER: ... flack jackets? I heard that ...
AMIN: That's a flare. You can see, can you see the flare now? They just fired another flare. Obviously, they're trying to pinpoint where is this fire coming from. They're trying to see, is it from the buildings, is it from behind the buildings? There are some trees in this area. So, obviously, they're really working hard to try to find out where are those people who are shooting at them.
BLITZER: So what you're saying, Rula, is that the Marines are firing the flares to illuminate the skies, so they can better make out who may be shooting at them or at others. Is that your understanding, Rula of what's happening?
AMIN: That is the case. They're shooting the flares to illuminate the sky to be able to see what is happening. Again, there are not a lot of troops here. They don't control every street. And the Marines don't go into any neighborhood. They have to be careful as to where they go. There are some neighborhoods they haven't been into yet. And so, whenever they hear fire, they just can't go and run towards it. They try to detect. They try to determine where is it coming from, how many people are there, what kind of weapons they have before they make their move.
And, obviously, that's what's happening now, especially that it's night. Very few people on the streets, and in most Baghdad, there are -- there's power outage. So most of the buildings and the streets are dark and that makes it even harder for whoever -- easier for the people who want to shoot at the Marines and harder for the Marines to spot anybody - Wolf.
BLITZER: All right, Rula, we're going to continue to show our viewers these live pictures from downtown Baghdad where a firefight is going on. To our viewers who may just be joining us, if you see flares illuminate the skies, those are U.S. military flares. They're looking for individuals who are firing at U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. LBC, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation reporting now from Baghdad that one Iraqi has been arrested in this incident which has now gone on for several minutes. Rula Amin will be standing by, gathering information for us, as well.
And as we show you these live pictures of Baghdad, I want to show you an interview that I conducted earlier today here in Doha, Qatar, at Camp al-Saliyah, that's the temporary headquarters of the U.S. Central Command. General Tommy Franks, the commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom, sat down with me, and we spoke about a wide range of issues. Here's part one of that interview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Let's go through the battlefield first. Then, we'll get into some of the other issues.
GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: Sure.
BLITZER: Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's ancestral hometown. Is it over there?
FRANKS: I wouldn't say it's over, but I will say we have American forces in Tikrit right now.
BLITZER: And is there any resistance, organized military resistance?
FRANKS: When last I checked this force was moving on Tikrit, and there was not any resistance.
BLITZER: What does that say to you, the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard, the special security organizations, all of Saddam Hussein's military and police have crumbled?
FRANKS: One would like to think that. But I think we would be premature to say, well, gosh, it's all done, it's all finished. And, so, what we need to do is we need to complete -- well let me say it this way. There are several things we know. We know that the army has been destroyed. The Iraqi army has been destroyed. We know that there is no regime command and control in existence right now. We know that there are pockets of -- I've heard them referred to as everything from paramilitary to death squad to Fedayeen Saddam. We know there are pockets of that. We also know that there are pockets of foreigners in Iraq who have decided to fight to their last breath. And so until we have a sense that we have all of that under control, then we probably will not characterize the initial military phase as having been completed and the regime totally gone.
BLITZER: When you say foreigners, what do you mean by that?
FRANKS: From a number of countries, Syria, as well as a number of others. We have found and identified fighters from these countries. And they have come in as mercenaries. They have been paid by the Iraqis. We have seen recruiting material that has been passed out in a number of countries. People have signed up. They have been coming in over the last several months into Iraq. And they're employed as everything from suicide bombers to small group hit squads.
BLITZER: Is the Syrian government behind this?
FRANKS: Oh, my, goodness, that's not for me to say. I simply can identify the nationality of the people, but I wouldn't associate it with government sponsorship.
BLITZER: The word the other day was they found a lot of these suicide vests. FRANKS: Yes, I think 300 yesterday.
BLITZER: And they had explosives and timing devices.
FRANKS: That's correct and steel balls.
BLITZER: Where did they come from?
FRANKS: Don't know yet. Don't know yet. But it's an amazing thing when you walk in a school. You know, one of the things we're doing right now is getting the power back on, establishing water and all of that. And when you go in a school and you look around and what you find is 300 suicide vests, it's a rather shocking event. So I'm not sure of the origin yet, but we'll find out.
BLITZER: The battlefield we were talking about Tikrit, is that the remaining pocket, the most significant military challenge that you face on the battlefield?
FRANKS: If you associate military challenge with only the population centers, then this is the last of the major population centers that we know we want to control. But you know as well as I do that Iraq's a large country. And so there are lots of places in this country where we have not physically had our soldiers. And I think that's understandable given the fact we've only been at this about three weeks. We will go to all of them, Wolf.
BLITZER: There was no last stand from Saddam Hussein.
FRANKS: Absolutely not.
BLITZER: Where is Saddam Hussein.
FRANKS: I don't know. He's either dead or he's running a lot.
BLITZER: What's your hunch right now?
FRANKS: My boss doesn't permit me to have hunches, Wolf. He will simply be alive until I can confirm he's dead.
BLITZER: Are you looking for his DNA at that crater in Baghdad?
FRANKS: The appropriate people with the appropriate forensics are doing checks you would find appropriate in each of the places where we think we may have killed regime leadership.
BLITZER: Do you have DNA of Saddam Hussein?
FRANKS: Oh, of course, of course.
BLITZER: You do?
FRANKS: Of course.
BLITZER: So you'll be able to confirm, make a positive confirmation if, in fact, he was in that building? FRANKS: Well, unless remains were removed. I mean, one wouldn't ever want to say for sure 100 percent you can do anything. But what you should know is that we have the forensic capability to chase these things down, and we'll chase them down, every one of them all the way.
BLITZER: Weapons of mass destruction, so far there have been some initial tests that showed perhaps positive.
FRANKS: Right.
BLITZER: But as of this moment, as we speak right now, have you found any?
FRANKS: Two thousand, 3,000, well, I have not found any that I -- that I have absolutely satisfied myself are a weapon of mass destruction materials. But you're talking about 2,000, 3,000 perhaps distinct places in this country where we know we're going to go, and investigate each one of them. We may have on a given day somewhere between 5 and 10 or 15 site exploitations ongoing in a 24-hour period of time. In each one of these cases, we will take products, do testing and so forth. And in some cases, that testing will take, actually maybe as long as this war has been going on up to this point.
And so what we need to do, Wolf, is we need to have a very clear sense of expectation on this. The first thing that we wanted to do was fight this war. And I think we're reasonably well satisfied with where we see that right now, but we have a number of actions that have to go on in this country before we're going to say, okay, we've achieved what we wanted, which is to permit the Iraqi people to have a government of their choice so that they can reap the riches of this country.
BLITZER: On the weapons of mass destruction, so far there have been some initial positives. Have they turned out to be false positives or are you still in the midst of investigating some of the initial warheads and other evidence that you may have come across?
FRANKS: Wolf, the answer is yes, it's yes to both.
BLITZER: False positives.
FRANKS: We have seen false positives and we are also continuing the evaluation of a whole range of other weapon systems to be sure that they either are or are not WMD related.
BLITZER: Are you surprised almost a month into this war, you haven't come across some really hard evidence of what the inspectors used to call a smoking gun?
FRANKS: Not surprised at all. Let me ask you a question. Are you surprised that this regime, after everything that was said about it, has no army, has no navy and had no air force today?
BLITZER: I'll ask the questions, you give the answers.
(LAUGHTER) FRANKS: I think it's the same thing. I think we could be surprised or, perhaps, not be surprised. I'm not surprised, because I think as we said from the very beginning, some things in this effort will happen simultaneously and some things will happen sequentially. The full exploitation of this whole issue of weapons of mass destruction is something that is going to be sequential behind the security of all these sites that we need to get into.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: We're going to continue our interview with General Franks shortly. But I want to show our viewers these live pictures from Baghdad. We've been monitoring what has been going on near the Palestine Hotel, that is where the international press corps, most of it at least is based. There was a firefight there. We heard gunfire going up. We also saw flares illuminate the skies over the area. U.S. troops clearly searching for the source of that gunfire. U.S. Marines in control of the area around the Palestine Hotel, certainly inside the Palestine Hotel itself. We will continue to watch this scene in Baghdad, bring some more information to you as we get it.
When we come back, though, part II of my special interview with General Tommy Franks. We'll speak about the next steps for the U.S.- led coalition. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: We'll get to part II of my interview with General Tommy Franks, the commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom shortly.
But I want to show our viewers some more of these live pictures from downtown Baghdad. There is a firefight underway. Apparently, according to our Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre, a search for some sort of sniper in the general vicinity of the Palestine Hotel. That's in the center of the Iraqi capital. That's also where the foreign press, most of the foreign press is based, including CNN's Rula Amin. She's on top of the roof over at the Palestine Hotel. Rula what do you see? What do you hear right now?
AMIN: Well, I'll tell you the latest, Wolf, is we just talked to Sergeant Gripple (ph) from the Marines, and he told us that there were about five guys in one building. And they have AKs. And they have been sniping, basically, at the Marines. They are trying to silence this fire. They are surrounding the place. We can see now that there is more lights from the roof of the Palestine Hotel directed towards that building. They are trying to get more lights. And we do see some Marines moving in the circle just outside the Palestine Hotel.
As you said, this is where the Marines are based and hundreds of western journalists. And, as I said, what he is telling us is that the case is that the firefight started when some of those guys, snipers shooting at the Marines. The Marines shot back. They defected where they are. They found it is about 200 meters away from where I am standing right now. And they think they know in which building they are. And they are surrounding that building - Wolf. BLITZER: And the flares that we saw illuminate the skies earlier, were shot up by the Marines or U.S. soldiers, perhaps, in order to help spot these guys in this building, these five guys. We have no idea who they may be, paramilitary forces, irregulars, other fighters or whatever. No word, Rula, on whose these individuals firing at the U.S. Marines might be, is there?
AMIN: No, they don't know. And they think they are five, because I asked the sergeant. I said how do you know that they are five. He said, we think it's five people. And they shot these flares in order to be able to see what is around most of Baghdad. There is no electricity. The streets are very dark, and like almost every other building. So they needed the flares in order to be able to see. And it seems after they send these flares and through other methods, they were able to determine that those five people are in that building, 200 meters away from where I'm standing.
And now it seems that they are trying to put more light. In the beginning, they asked us to put all the lights off. And now they're actually directing - they are having more lights put up. And they are directing the lights in the direction of that building, obviously, trying to either surround them or make sure that nobody gets out of the building without them knowing it - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, it's approaching 2 a.m. in the Iraqi capital, I assume - and correct me if I'm wrong - that around this time of night, it gets relatively quiet in Baghdad, as opposed to perhaps during the daylight hours. But is that assumption wrong?
AMIN: Well, it does get quiet. However, this kind of firefights are not irregular. They are pretty sporadic. And they are not fierce. Most of the people the Marines are fighting with are individuals, small groups. It is not organized resistance. Most of what they have are either guns or AKs, not heavy weapons. So it is easier - for the Marines, it is easier for them to overcome such resistance than if people were using tanks or using machine guns. The sergeant just now reassured me. He said they do not have machine guns. He said it's only AKs. And he seemed confident that they have the situation under control. However, from - once in awhile, every few minutes, we do hear some shots being fired - Wolf.
BLITZER: How big of a Marine presence around the hotel, in the hotel, do you estimate Rule that there is?
AMIN: Well, Wolf, it is very heavy, visible presence. We see them everywhere you go in the hotel. Like, when you enter the hotel, right outside the hotel there are tanks. There are APCs. And there are Marines standing there, preventing anyone from coming into the hotel, unless they were journalists with the right accreditation. They have to have their press cards on. They have to check their picture. And only those people are allowed in. Most of the day, there are many Iraqis who try to come in to the hotel. Some of them want to sell the journalists their stories. Some of them are actually there to sell the Marines their stories, asking for helping on different issues. But they are not allowed into the hotel. The minute you pass the Marines from the outside gates, you still have more Marines inside, many tanks, many APCs. You see them outside the lobby, you see them inside the lobby. So many of them in the elevators. You can hear more fires now, but no flares. It is just shots. So I think - as I said before ...
BLITZER: More gunshots. We just heard, Rula, that gunshot. We just heard that gunshot. It was clearly audible to me and to all of our viewers. As well, you know, Rula, as we watch this firefight play itself out, presumably, US. Marines encountering some shots from what one sergeant told Rula - there was another, a few more shots right there. Five or so people holed up into a building firing at U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. As we watch this, as we listen at the shots being fired, Rula.
When I spoke earlier today with CNN's Christiane Amanpour at the Palestine Hotel where you are right now, she said there was supposed to be some sort of pilot project tomorrow, bringing back to work 150 or so Iraqi police officers to help patrol the city, to help stop the violence and the looting. Is there any change so far on that front? These police officers, obviously, 150 are not going to make a huge difference in a city of some 5 million. But it's a step. How significant Rula of a step is it?
AMIN: It is a very significant step Wolf, on many levels. First, many residents in Baghdad are very disturbed by all this looting. They feel that first it's their security, the security of their property and their lives that is threatened. Second, they're very proud people and they feel this is not the image they want to send about Iraq and Iraqis. They really hid the fact that these images are out there, just the day follows after Saddam Hussein is gone. At the same time, we spoke to them.
Yesterday I was on the streets talking to many people in different neighborhoods. And I asked them, what do you think if the old police came back, the same policemen who used to work for the Iraqi government. And they said you know what? We don't mind because we need anything, we need to see some concrete steps on the streets to make sure people know there is law and order here. Otherwise, it will be chaos and just deteriorate. So, they didn't have a lot of faith that the old policemen will be able to stabilize things very much.
However, they thought that would be a significant step in that direction. And they said they welcome it. Most of the people we spoke to said they welcome it. I didn't speak to one person who opposed that. However, I do remember at one point, I was talking to someone and he said, yes, we would like to see the police come back and the security forces, and like three people interrupted him and said not the security forces. Only the police. Obviously, because they have suffered from these security forces. And to them, that was something that's out of the question.
At the same time, it also tells you that there is some kind of willingness among the people and among the U.S. Marines that are here. or whoever is going to organize Iraq in the coming few months, to use the former bureaucratic structure that Iraq used to have. Today, we also heard that in the south, the Marines and the U.N. agencies were asking former Iraqi bureaucrats, civilians who used to work in administrative posts to come along, to come forward and maybe try to help in bringing water and different supplies to Iraqis who need it so badly. The Marines cannot do all this on their own and they do need desperately the help from the Iraqis and from the old system - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, as you look at the -- you've been a visitor to Baghdad, obviously, many times over the years. Tell our viewers what the difference was between Iraqi police officers who were patrolling the streets, presumably giving traffic tickets but also looking for common criminals, as opposed to the security apparatus which was, of course, all pervasive in a totalitarian police state that used to be Iraq.
AMIN: Well, the police officers were basically manning the streets, taking care of traffic, taking care of theft, making sure there was no burglaries, and that they did a relatively an OK job. But they were very poorly paid. Most of them were not ruling Baath party members. They were not actually politicized. They didn't have a role in terms of controlling the political situation in Iraq. The other security forces, most of the members were either ruling Baath party members, or very close to the Saddam Hussein family, or his clan or his tribe or from Tikrit. That's where he comes from, the same town that was the Marines went into today. And those people were very well paid. They had high salaries. They were very influential, and they controlled people's lives in every single aspect.
Anybody who said any kind of -- who made any mention of Saddam Hussein in a critical way, even in a remote way could be persecuted. He could be arrested. There would be no trials, no lawyers. Families won't see them. And we did in the past few days encounter many people, families looking for loved ones, looking for other members of their families who have been taken from their homes by those security forces, and they just disappeared. They don't know what happened to them. They don't know if they're alive or dead. They don't know if they've been in prison for years and then died.
So, at one point, at one of the security buildings, at one of the intelligence buildings, people were actually digging the ground in that building, because they believe that maybe - maybe some of their family members who have been taken away by the security forces may have been imprisoned in these buildings. And they didn't find anything in the building. So they started digging the ground, thinking there may be -- there's more stuff (ph) over there. You can hear it.
BLITZER: All right, Rula, stand by for a minute. As we hear these shots, and these are obviously very disturbing. Let's listen in briefly and see if we hear some more.
You've been hearing an extensive barrage, an extensive barrage of gunfire coming out near the Palestine Hotel in the central part of Baghdad. For our viewers who may just be tuning in, we're showing you live pictures of Baghdad right now. There's been a firefight going on for a good half hour, a firefight involving what we estimate, according to our Rula Amin on the scene, perhaps five individuals. Perhaps paramilitaries, perhaps Fedayeen Saddam, perhaps simply terrorists. We don't know. U.S. Marines on the scene returning fire. Earlier, we also saw flares illuminate the skies over this area as the search for these fighters, these snipers, whatever we want to call them, continues. We don't know what happened in that latest barrage or that latest exchange of fire that we just heard live here on CNN. Rula Amin is at the Palestine Hotel, it's right near, only meters away, yards away from where this firefight has been going on. She's there with the Marines, she's on the roof overlooking this scene, this firefight that's been going on in the central part of Baghdad, just after 2 a.m. now in the Iraqi capital.
Rula, as you assess what's going on, as you can see, you probably have a better vantage of what's going on than we do. Tell us what's going on.
AMIN: I'll tell you, Wolf, this time the fire was incoming. It was obviously not the Marines shooting back, but this was incoming fire in the direction of the Marines and the hotel. And it's very close. According to the sergeant we just spoke to, he says those guys are just about 200 meters away from here, and they think it's about five guys in a building. For a while, we could only hear the outgoing fire from the Marines themselves. It seems now those guys are firing back again. And maybe they're trying actually to shut the lights off, because I just told you the Marines have just more lights on the roof, trying to light that area where they think those guys are. And maybe those guys are trying to fire in this direction to stop these lights and put it off -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula Amin, all right, I'm going to let you go. Be careful over there, Rula. And if you get some more information, obviously we'll bring you back. Rula Amin has been with us for the last several minutes, describing what's going on, this firefight not far from the Palestine Hotel in the central part of the Iraqi capital.
Our military correspondent, indeed our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre is monitoring this development as well. Jamie, as you look at these pictures, dramatic pictures of what's happening in Baghdad, urban warfare. This may not necessarily be classical urban warfare, but it's certainly a deadly form of urban warfare. What's going through your mind?
MCINTYRE: Well, it does have the salient feature of urban warfare, and that is the many, many places that enemy fighters can conceal themselves. That's what makes urban warfare so dangerous is the amount of places that someone can fire at you from. And it does appear that the Marines are taking fire, and also giving fire, in this exchange that's going on outside the Palestine Hotel in downtown Baghdad.
Of course, the Pentagon has said that Iraq remains a dangerous place, that Baghdad remains a dangerous place. In your interview today with General Tommy Franks, he pointed out that they still have what they call pockets of foreigners in Iraq, who in Franks' word have decided to fight until their last breath. We don't know who's responsible for these attacks on the Marines, but it does illustrate that difficulty that the U.S. military has in transitioning to some sort of a peacekeeping or stabilization role while they still have to be worried about taking fire. And of course, whenever you're in a city and trying to defend a target standing in one place, you become a much easier target.
While the Marines were moving through the city, staying mobile, keeping the opposition off balance, they're much safer. But once they start to settle in and the enemy knows where they are, they become much more vulnerable and have to worry a lot more about force protection. And this is exactly the kind of situation it's very difficult to defend against. If there's a lone sniper or several snipers, especially if they're willing to give their own lives in a suicide attack, it can be extremely difficult for the U.S. to defend against this.
Militarily, it's not significant. The capacity to inflict casualties is limited. But those casualties can still have a great psychological effect, and it can prevent, as I said, the transition of a role into a more peaceful role in the city of Baghdad. Of course, the big priority the United States would like to see now is some sort of return to normality in Baghdad, where people can begin to resume their daily lives, where commerce can resume, where schools can resume. And as long as there's a situation where people have to be worried about even walking out on the street in front of a main hotel, then clearly they haven't achieved that situation.
As for what's going on in this particular exchange of gunfire, of course, is impossible for us to tell from 6,000 miles away, except the obvious, that's self-evident from these pictures, which is that the Marines are being very cautious, they have taken fire, they have returned some fire, and they need to make sure that they neutralize this threat one way or the other before they can call it a night.
BLITZER: Jamie, I just want to recap for our viewers who may just be tuning in what we're seeing. We're looking at these live pictures of Baghdad. Baghdad, not secure by any means right now. Probably more secure than it was a day or so ago. But look at that flare that's now been fired over the skies of Baghdad. Clearly a U.S. military flare. They're looking for individuals that may be holed up in a building not far from the Palestine Hotel. That kind of flare lights up the sky, lights up the area, so they might be able to get a better sighting of who's firing at U.S. Marines and perhaps others. The flare goes up and then it goes down, and then they'll probably have to do it again to illuminate the area.
But there you saw that U.S. military flare go up over the skies of Baghdad. This is something the Marines, Jamie McIntyre, train for. I've been down to that urban warfare training center that they've set up in North Carolina at Camp Lejeune. I assume you've been there as well. The guys I assume, the U.S. Marines, the men and women who are in Baghdad right now, have been training precisely for this kind of operation. Is that a fair assessment?
MCINTYRE: Absolutely. This is called a MOUT, which is military operations in urban terrain. Of course, the most difficult operations are when you have to take an objective. And in the exercises that U.S. military personnel do in training, they typically sustain very high casualty rates in trying to fight in an urban environment. It's considered often success if you can keep your casualty rate under 30 or 20 or 30 percent. But that's when you have to, say, storm an objective and go room to room, house to house, fighting a very determined foe. They practice for it all the time.
This is a little bit different situation. Not quite as dangerous. But still potentially dangerous. And that is they're in what appears to be a situation where they're trying to defend against a sniper. That way, they're able to take cover. They're also able to take advantage of some of the high-tech technology that the United States has in counter-sniper warfare. They can use night vision goggles and other equipment to sometimes detect where the muzzle flash might be coming from, if it's coming from a building. They can also sometimes use overhead imagery from Predators. They could even call in, if they wanted to, call in an air strike. There are still combat air patrols over Baghdad with precision-guided bombs. If they, for instance, decided that the threat was coming from a particular building, they could radio those coordinates up to an aircraft and drop a satellite-guided, precision-guided bomb directly on the location where they thought they were taking fire from.
So they have a lot of options, but they also need to be mindful that they're in an urban environment, they're trying to minimize civilian casualties. And so they need to factor all those things in, and that's where the training comes in in this kind of a situation. Not to act precipitously, but to be able to act methodically, to neutralize the threat with a minimum threat of damage and -- to unintended civilian casualties, and so-called collateral damage -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jamie, we saw that flare go up. We've seen now several flares go up over Baghdad in the past half hour, 40 minutes or so as we've been monitoring this firefight live here on CNN, not far from the Palestine Hotel. We've heard Rula Amin get word from one U.S. Marine on the scene, they suspect perhaps five fighters, some sort of fighters, perhaps paramilitary forces, perhaps Fedayeen Saddam, perhaps some of these pockets of foreigners, as you correctly point out, that General Tommy Franks described earlier in the day in that interview I had with him here in Doha, Qatar at the Central Command headquarters.
When I asked him about those pockets of foreigners, I said, who are these foreigners? And immediately out of his mouth was, Syrians. We've heard lately, Jamie, as you well know, a lot of discussion from top Bush administration officials, the president, the secretary of defense, and others now, the commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a lot of talk about the Syrians and what they may or may not be doing. When we hear about Syrians who may be in Baghdad, who may be fighting, perhaps holding out, that doesn't necessarily mean, Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong, that these are representatives of the Syrian government. They may be mercenaries who thought that they would serve the so- called cause, or were getting paid by Saddam Hussein. Is that what you're hearing as well?
MCINTYRE: In fact, I think that's the prime suspicion. Not necessarily this was state-sponsored activity, but part of the foreign fighters that Iraq had recruited to serve as sometimes stiffeners for some of the regular forces. People who were being paid to fight. Although the U.S. has left open the question of the extent that Syria might have been, quote, "helpful" in Iraq, both in supplying military equipment and supplying people and expertise, and in also possibly providing one of the few places where Iraqi officials could flee for safe haven.
Now it's unclear how many senior Iraqi officials may have made their way into Syria. But the Pentagon believes at least some number have done that. I haven't heard of any big names that they're looking for that are definitely in Syria. But Syria is one of the few places where they can go and expect to get some sort of asylum. So the U.S. is very concerned about Syria's involvement, and to the extent that it's helping out Iraq. And again, these foreign fighters are something they've been very careful to say that they're not sure exactly where they're all from. They are not sure exactly what they're all about. They do however seem to be some of the forces that are willing to fight until the end, so-called dead-enders identified by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. So we don't know if that's what we're dealing with here, or if there's some other faction involved in this fighting.
BLITZER: Jamie, please stand by. Rula Amin is on the scene for us. She is on the roof of the Palestine Hotel. That's only a few meters away from where this firefight is going on. We saw the flares illuminate the area several times, U.S. military flares. Rula, within the past few minutes Lebanese television has reported that one U.S. servicemen, we don't know from what branch, Army or Marine Corps, has been injured in this firefight that we've been watching now on CNN live for the last half hour, 40 minutes, or so. Have you collected any additional information on what may be going on?
AMIN: Well, we have heard this report. We're trying to confirm it. I just spoke to one of the sergeants here, the U.S. Marine sergeants, just about 15 minutes ago, and he told me that the Marines think there are about five people armed with AKs, and that they were firing at the Marines. They believe that they are all hiding in one building, just about 200 meters away from where I'm standing on the roof of the Palestine Hotel. And so he didn't seem to be panicking. It seems that they were thinking that things are under control.
In the beginning of the firefight, they asked everybody to turn the lights off. Many reporters are on this roof, trying to do live shots to record the story. And they were all asked to turn their lights off. Then the Marines came and they put more lights in the direction of that building they believe those people are staying at. Then we saw more flares going in a different direction. And then more fire coming into the direction of the Marines and the hotel. So it seems maybe the Marines are suspecting now that there's more fire coming from another direction, but for the last 10 minutes, it's been quiet. However, we do still see Marines moving around the circle outside the Palestine Hotel -- Wolf.
BLITZER: And Rula, we heard from Jamie McIntyre reporting, quoting the commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom, General Franks in that interview I had with him earlier today, speaking about the dangers that still exist, very real dangers, inside Baghdad. He referred to what he called "pockets of foreigners," and then he specifically mentioned perhaps Syrians. Syrian mercenaries who have come in. Jamie was speaking about others, other non-Iraqis, other Arab fighters, Muslim fighters, who might still believe that they're going to fight until the end, fight the U.S., even though the Republican Guard, the Elite Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, has crumbled, basically. The regular Iraqi military has basically gone away, has given up. There's no sign of the Iraqi leadership, the Baath leadership. No sign of Saddam Hussein. But there are these other so-called foreigners who appear ready to fight and die until the bitter end. What can you tell us about these foreigners? Are they mercenaries? Were they expecting to get paid? Or are they simply what we would call in the United States, true believers, believing that they're serving the great cause?
AMIN: Well, Wolf, here they call them the Arab volunteers, because these -- you can hear some shots over there.
So they call them here the Arab volunteers, because those people came from different parts of the Arab world, from Syria, from Lebanon, from Jordan, from Libya, from Tunisia, and many came from Saudi Arabia. They believe that the U.S. invasion to Iraq was an invasion of an Arab country, a Muslim country, that this was an occupation, not a help to the Iraqi people. And they thought it was their duty to help defend Iraq, along with the Iraqis.
However, when the Iraqis decided to stop fighting and they gave up the fight, those people didn't. Some of them didn't even know that the battle was over. Because they didn't have any radios, there's no power, they don't have their families here so there's no way for them to actually know what was happening.
At the same time, many of them had said that they didn't come here to defend Saddam Hussein, but to defend Iraq. So the fact that Saddam Hussein had given up on the fighting doesn't seem to deter them from continuing what they consider as a legitimate fight. They see this as a threat not only to Iraq, but to the whole Arab countries. And so they feel that they're fulfilling a duty.
Some of them are religious, and they come here with very religious motives and feelings, that they're fulfilling a religious duty. But others are not. And again, the surprising thing is that there were many Saudis among them. People who thought that this U.S. move into Iraq is a threat to the region and a threat to Islam, and they came here to help. And the Saudi element is significant, more even than Syrian, because the Syrians are more...
BLITZER: All right, Rula, stand by for a minute. Let me explain to our viewers the gunshots, the firefight that we're hearing live, we're watching live here on CNN. You can see a United States Marine obviously taking aim, firing into a building from which there's fire coming at them. We heard from one Marine sergeant on the scene with our Rula Amin, at the Palestine Hotel, estimating that perhaps five, perhaps more individuals, we don't know who they are, are sniping, they are firing at U.S. troops in the area of the Palestine Hotel, which is of course the hotel that's housing most of the foreign press. Hundreds of reporters understandably have gathered in Baghdad, despite the dangers. They want to be where the story is. They thought -- I think many of them, including our own team of CNN correspondents, it was relatively safe, relatively safe around the Palestine Hotel, inside the Palestine Hotel, because that's where the U.S. Marines effectively set up shop as well, with a heavy, very visible U.S. Marine presence. It was believed to be relatively safe.
But now with only a few meters away from this hotel, we're hearing these exchanges, these volleys going on. We don't know precisely what's going on, but we do know that there have been flares that have illuminated the area around the firefight, over the past 45 minutes so. The U.S. Marines looking for the source of those snipers inside some building. Do you have any idea, Rula, where this -- what may be the building from which these snipers may be targeting U.S. Marines, perhaps others?
AMIN: Yes, we are told by the sergeant that they are in a building -- it's a small building, it's like a gas station, just behind the mosque. I'm not sure that you can see the mosque now. But if you remember, there's a circle just outside the hotel, a famous circle with a mosque with a blue dome. And that's exactly where the Iraqis went and with the help of the Marines, brought down the statue of Saddam Hussein.
The Marines are exactly at that circle. And behind the mosque, there is a gas station with a small building next to it, adjacent to it, part of the gas station. And the Marines think there is where those people are shooting at them from.
We are next to those buildings. There's an Al-Luia (ph) club, this is an upscale club in Baghdad. It's deserted now. Probably there's only a couple of guards there. There's also a very famous chicken place. But the Marines say they believe the guys are at the gas station, not at the chicken place -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, within the past few minutes, the Al-Arabiya, the Arabic language television network, has reported that three or four individuals described as the fighters who may have been at that location, dressed in civilian clothes, have now surrendered to the U.S. Marines. We don't know more than that. We know that Al-Arabiya is reporting that right now. Based on your experience, Rula, which is expensive obviously in the Middle East, how reliable would a report like that from Al-Arabiya be?
AMIN: Well, I think, Wolf, it's a matter of where is their position. How much can they see from the roof spot? Because it's a huge roof here at the Palestine Hotel. This is not a matter of the credibility of Al-Arabiya, but the credibility of their position. So if they're in a better position than we are, then they can see more.
However, even if they had seen people actually turning themselves in, it doesn't mean that those are the people who are actually doing the firing. Because just about half an hour ago, there was another guy who had -- we were told had been arrested. But I think the way the eyewitnesses described it for me, they said that he came out, one of the Marines shouted "don't shoot," calling on his colleague not to shoot, then he went out to one building, and brought this guy, he was holding his arm, the arm of this man to the back. And this may be a guard. Because he didn't have a gun. This may be just a guard in one of the buildings who got afraid and decided to tell the Marines that he was there because he wanted to save his life.
So we're not sure that even if Al-Arabiya crew had seen those four guys coming out that they are the guys who are doing the shooting, because we're still hearing the firing from the Marines and from the other side. So if those people have given themselves up, who's shooting? --Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, we saw another flare just go up within the past few seconds, to try to show some -- illuminate some light. We see people moving now on the streets. Stand by, Rula, for a moment, collect your thoughts if you got some more information, we'll of course get that on the air right away.
I want to set the scene once again for viewers who may just be tuning into CNN at this point. Now for nearly an hour, we've been covering this firefight on the streets of Baghdad, right near the Palestine Hotel, the hotel where the Marines are based, effectively, in this one section of central Baghdad. It also happens to be the hotel where hundreds of foreign reporters have converged to do their reporting from, including CNN's own staff of reporters, producers, photographers and others.
And within the past 45 minutes to an hour, we've heard extensive gunfire coming from a location near the hotel. We've seen a lot of flares go up to try to illuminate the area. We've seen Marines return fire, and we've seen of course the fire coming from this building.
General David Grange, retired, U.S. Army is joining us now. General, this sounds like a serious kind of firefight with potential, if there are snipers aiming at U.S. Marines from a location that they may be fairly secure at. We haven't heard any shots in the last few minutes. But we do see somebody in custody right now, General. As you can see, somebody being moved across the street. But we don't know if this is someone who was firing at the Marines. It may be somebody else. But we see this individual being taken into custody as we continue to monitor these events. How dangerous of a situation, as we've seen it, is this, General, for the U.S. Marines who are in and around the Palestine Hotel?
GEN. DAVID GRANGE, U.S. ARMY (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, this is one of those acts that was anticipated. In fact, I think many said that there would be more of these type of firefights, sniping, RPG, mortar round type engagements against the coalition forces. One thing that may be considered is that because of the correspondents in this particular hotel, that is one reason that the coalition forces were targeted at that location. Because of the information, the media will get out of that engagement, to show, hey, this place isn't secure, there's still some hostile people out there. And they won't know I don't think for some time who actually, or the extent of the enemy forces in this particular engagement.
BLITZER: What's the purpose, General? You're familiar with the flares that go up. They try to illuminate the area. It's now approaching 2:30 a.m. Baghdad time. No electricity, basically, in most of the city. It's very dark. So they fire up a flare to see if they can better determine who's shooting at them, where the fire is coming from? Is that it?
GRANGE: Well, the flares, normally -- for instance, the coalition forces have quite advanced night vision devices to use at night. But that usually helps you in an attack. If you're on defense, you can use any kind of artificial light, it would give you a greater advantage. So why use the night vision devices if you can use artificial light? And so that's the purpose. To fire the flares, to identify civilians or to identify people rapidly who have a weapon, who doesn't. And that's probably the criteria for shooting someone. Do they have a weapon or not? Because there's people dressed as civilians in this particular fight. So that's kind of the only way to tell friend or foe.
BLITZER: If they're dressed as civilians in civilian clothes, they're not wearing a uniform, that makes it more difficult, because then you don't know for sure if you're just firing at a random civilian, an innocent civilian, or someone who may be the enemy.
GRANGE: No, they'll only fire at someone who's a threat, in other words someone that actually has a weapon. That's one purpose of the flares. Or some other type of hostile act towards the Marine perimeter. So that's what's determining whether they engage or not.
BLITZER: We had heard a lot of speculation, General Grange, about these foreigners, these foreign fighters who have converged on Iraq in recent weeks, months, indeed years, some of them mercenaries, some of them true believers, if you will. Some of them what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called "dead-enders." They're ready to die there on the scene for what they believe is a just cause. They potentially are a lot more serious threat than the regular Iraqi army or even the Republican Guard, because all of those guys have basically crumbled and have given up.
GRANGE: I think you're right there. Definitely harder than the Republican Guard. If you recall from Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, a lot of foreign fighters involved there, to include Chechens, the Sudanese, Yemenis, et cetera. And the same thing is happening here in Iraq. They are probably integrated with the Fedayeen. But definitely not the regular army or the Republican Guard.
BLITZER: The Fedayeen Saddam or the paramilitary groups that we heard so much about. What was their track record in this war? Did they fight or did they give up as well?
GRANGE: Well, the Fedayeen were the ones that, you know, the catalyst behind forcing the regular Iraqi military, and probably even some of the Republican Guard units, their smaller elements, to fight with fear or threat of death if they did not. And so they're the hard-core fanatics. Most of these people are recruited, Wolf, because they're thugs, they are just criminals. And I remember this from the Balkans, they used to let people out of prison to join the ranks of some of these special police paramilitary units. And so that's the kind of people that you're dealing with here. They wear civilian clothes, they blend into the neighborhoods, they're bad characters, they're thugs. And the only way to identify them in many cases is through the civilian populace that turns them in.
BLITZER: We haven't heard any shots fired, I don't believe, in the last few minutes. We did see the Marines take some individuals off the streets. But yet another flare has just been fired to try to put some light on the scene. So presumably, General Grange, this firefight that's been going on now for about an hour, this firefight is not over if they're still firing flares over the sky, unless you tell me that it's just a post-firefight standard operating procedure. You fire a flare just to double and triple check that there's nobody else there. What do you make of it?
GRANGE: I think the flares, Wolf, will be fired on call from one of the ground commanders on the perimeter. They'll continue to call in mortar flares to light up the area as they determine there may be a threat or suspected movement in certain areas.
This will probably continue through daylight. And then you're going to have a phase where now they've checked the immediate area of the hotel, but they're going to have to send in patrols out to try to find where these little sniper cells are located. And they may slip away by daylight. So this is a challenging situation. And in fact, it's leveling the playing field for the paramilitary against the coalition forces.
BLITZER: We did see that dramatic video just a few minutes ago of that one individual, bare-chested, being forced to run through the street in the custody of U.S. troops, clearly someone suspicious, someone who's generated some concern, and he's now apprehended. This picture is something that just occurred within the past few minutes. We've been watching all of this unfold live here on CNN.
The reason we can see this is because it's near the Palestine Hotel, plenty of cameras around the Palestine Hotel. They're monitoring this situation. They're watching it, although they've asked the U.S. Marines who are in charge effectively of the area in and around the Palestine Hotel, they've asked us to turn off our lights. We can't see our reporters up on the roof there but we can see, we can see what's happening in and around the hotel.
We do see U.S. Marines still in clearly a combat ready position, squatting down with their guns pointed. They're looking - they're looking to see if they can determine where the shots being fired at them are coming from.
Jamie McIntyre, as you look at these dramatic pictures, the U.S. Marines trained for this kind of operation as you and I have discussed, but training is one thing. Real life activity is obviously another.
MCINTYRE: That's right, Wolf, and this is where all the training kicks in. I mean one of the reasons they go through such extensive training is that when they're in a situation where they're facing urban combat, they don't have to think as much about what it is they need to do.
They have essentially a mental checklist of things to do to not only neutralize the threat but to keep - to stay safe, to minimize the chance that they're going to take any casualties, meanwhile put force against the enemy forces in order to either flesh them out or to capture or kill them.
And, again, this is always the most difficult situation, taking out a sniper or snipers, particularly if they're well concealed and you can't tell exactly where the fire is coming from, for instance if a sniper is moving from window to window or even from building to building and is using a weapon that can be concealed, it can be very, very tough to know when something like this is over. Essentially you know it's over when they're not firing at you anymore unless you're able to identify the target and take it out yourself.
And they also want to avoid overkill, that is to say they could easily call in, for instance, air strikes to use very powerful bombs to neutralize a target, but that runs a lot of risk of civilian casualties and also it also just runs the risk to them as well, because any time you bring in a lot of airpower on a target that can pose a threat to your forces on the ground as well, the friendly forces.
But what we're seeing here, as near as we can tell from our vantage point 6,000 miles away, they're basically running this operation by the book. They're being very methodical about it. You've seen them use flares a couple of times to illuminate the area, to give them a better look at some aspects of it. They'll do that from time to time. Other times they'll rely on night vision equipment that can pick up just even very, very faint amounts of light that help them see things moving in the darkness.
So, that's one of the reasons why they ask the reporters in the hotel not to use any lights because the night vision equipment is actually much more effective in an almost no light environment. It gives the U.S. an advantage. But again, we're just going to have to watch this play out. There's no way for us to tell from here exactly what's going on. It's not even clear the Marines themselves on the ground have a total picture of what it is they're up against and the adversary they're dealing with - Wolf.
BLITZER: Jamie, stand by please, Jamie McIntyre our senior Pentagon correspondent. We're also talking with General David Grange, our CNN military analyst, retired U.S. Army.
Rula Amin is our reporter. She's there. She's on the scene. She's only a few yards away from what's going on. She's on top of the roof at the Palestine Hotel. How many stories are there at that hotel, Rula? How high are you?
AMIN: Well, we're not actually high because we're not at the top floor of the hotel. The hotel, the highest floor there is 17 floors, but we're about only three floors up and this is kind of a secondary roof that all of the journalists, the foreign press that are here in Baghdad, they all have different live locations. It's a large area. That's why we all have different views of that circle just outside the gates of the Palestine Hotel. It's the same circle you saw, as I said before, where that Saddam Hussein statue was brought down with the help of the Marines and some Iraqi residents.
So, in that square we can see some Marines, soldiers, walking around, moving around. We don't see anybody running or anything, but the firefight, the shots we can still hear some of them. There are between once in a while still flares. The Marines told us they believe there are about five people with guns inside one of the buildings just behind the mosque.
I'm not sure you can see that mosque, but in that circle there is a mosque, and behind it there is a gas station. They believe there is a gas station over there and that those people are hiding in a building in that gas station. That's what the Marines' estimate is but still I think they are still trying to get a better picture because they are sending flares in different directions, not only in that direction.
And as I told you, Wolf, before we are not here. We can not be on camera because earlier we were told to put all our lights off on the roof. And then later on, the Marines came and they used some of the lights, big lights, from the roof, directed towards that building where they believe the guys are there with the guns.
This is only about 200 meters away from the Palestine Hotel or actually from where we're standing right here. Most of the reporters on the roof now have their flack jackets on and all the lights are turned off except those directed toward that building - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, I hope you have your flack jacket on as well, and if you have a helmet put it on also.
I want to bring in General Grange back. General, is this - Jamie McIntyre says it looks like it's being conducted according to standard operating procedure, according to the book, the flares, the return gunfire.
If there is a gas station near that mosque and we've all seen that mosque on CNN behind our reporters during daylight hours as they do their live shots from the Palestine Hotel, I assume it's that same mosque, why is it so difficult for the Marines which have a huge presence, significant, robust presence with tanks, armored personnel carriers, sophisticated equipment, night vision equipment, the flares, not to simply take out that gas station and find out what's going on?
GRANGE: Well, one - a couple points here. One is that there may be a patrol, a coalition patrol heading to that location right now. We just don't see it on broadcast. I mean they have probably counter sniper patrols going out right now.
Number two, the best counter sniper weapon is another sniper, and so one thing you can be sure of that there's some snipers and, again, we may not be able to see them. There are snipers waiting to take a shot at the next time an enemy sniper shows themselves, either from the muzzle flash or the individual moving back inside of a window, whatever the case may be.
And, it may not just be a sniper rifle shot to take out a sniper. It could be any direct fire weapon and this is a little controversy, but to include a tank because keep in mind a tank round is nothing but a big dart. There's different types of munitions for the Abrams tank but in most cases most of these rounds it's like almost like a giant bullet. It's just a rod, a steel rod.
And, the other point again I think it's important to realize about this is that the Palestine Hotel is not only a headquarters for coalition but it's also where the - whoever the enemy sniper group is they know that there's a lot of media in the vicinity and their actions will be captured on film.
BLITZER: Jamie McIntyre, our Pentagon correspondent, is watching all of this for us as well. I assume, Jamie, and maybe you have an answer to this, maybe you don't.
I assume the Marines set up shop in that Palestine Hotel in the lobby there precisely because that's where the foreign press, including the American press corps, had been based and established and they wanted to make sure that the international press corps was protected. It was also a good location for them to operate. But what, if anything, do you know about why they picked the Palestine Hotel to serve as a sort of base, at least in this one central part of Baghdad?
MCINTYRE: Well, I haven't heard anything official, Wolf, but it is a logical base of operations because, as you point out, it serves that dual purpose. One is it is a good place to operate from. It was during the war supposed to be a "no-strike target." It was supposed - it was not on the bombing list. It was not supposed to be attacked.
Now, you know there's a bit of a controversy about a tank round that apparently hit the building from a U.S. tank and whether or not the crew knew that that was supposed to be a no-strike target or whether they felt they needed to respond anyway to fire that was happening at that time.
But, again, so the idea was that that was never supposed to be a target that was supposed to be destroyed in any way so it would have been a logical base of operations, some place that would have still been in operating condition.
Also, it was being used to some extent by the Iraqis. The Iraqi information minister and others were often at the hotel, so it's a logical place for the U.S. to take control over and, in fact, it was the place where international news media were based and so they could essentially interact with them and protect them at the same time.
The U.S. has never assumed responsibility for the security of news reporters, nor do reporters, I think, expect that but it is mutually beneficial when there can be security and reporters can do their job and the U.S. doesn't have to worry about the very negative public relations that happens when a reporter is caught in the crossfire. So, for that reason it was a very logical place to set up shop.
BLITZER: All right, Jamie, please stand by.
General Grange, if you can see CNN right now on a monitor in front of you, you see this movement down the street. It looks like an armored personnel carrier. What does it say to you? What can you help our viewers better appreciate from the sights that they're seeing on their screen?
GRANGE: Well, what you have is a combat patrol. It looks like it's coming back from a patrol. In other words, they went somewhere to check out an area. Now they're returning to maybe the perimeter. It looked like they used the armored personnel carrier, the Amtrak (ph), to provide cover from sniper fire because that size round would not penetrate the armored personnel carrier and most of the area, you know, most of the vehicle's area of coverage.
It would not penetrate it, so they use that for protection, but it looks like they're coming back from one of those patrols I mentioned to you, mentioned that they're probably doing, and you're going to see much - probably there's a lot more of these that we don't see, but you can see the vehicle there providing protection for that particular squad, that patrol.
BLITZER: One final question, General Grange, before I let you go because I'm still a little confused. When do the Marines want to use the flares to illuminate the areas and when are they better off using night vision goggles which work better when it's very, very dark or when do you have a combination of both?
GRANGE: OK. Once firing starts or artificial light is established, whether it be a flare or headlights or like the light poles you're looking at right now, it kind of it flashes out. It blinds you under the night vision goggles. In other words, you get a short period of time where it just phases it out. It's like a flash - almost like a flash bulb type effect it has on the goggles.
The other is that night vision goggles are good when you're attacking, when you're, what do they call it meeting engagements or bumping into enemy forces at night. You're on patrol. You're on a raid. Like, for instance, when they went in to get Jessica, the POW, that type of thing. They're excellent for something like that.
But if you're in a perimeter around a big hotel and you're getting fire from many different locations, to put out artificial light doesn't really hurt you as long as you can put the flare behind, behind the suspected enemy location. That silhouettes the enemy to you, so you want to put the mortar flare behind the enemy position.
Now, the problem in a built-up area like a city, the buildings negate a lot of the effect of the flares but they're probably covering streets with those flares as well as the lights you see on the poles that are just kind of facing out to the perimeter. So, in this case, it's advantageous to have the artificial light. BLITZER: General David Grange, thanks very much. We'll be talking with you in a little while. General David Grange, our CNN military analyst.
Rula Amin is with us. She's on the scene, and for viewers who may just be tuning in, for more than an hour now we've been watching a firefight unfold, live here on CNN, on the streets of Baghdad not far from the Palestine Hotel, the hotel where the U.S. Marines are based in the central part of the Iraqi capital, also of course the point of operations for hundreds of foreign reporters who have converged on Baghdad, including our own reporters from CNN, one of them being Rula Amin.
Rula, I know that you can help us understand a little bit better why the Marines picked the Palestine Hotel to set up shop.
AMIN: Well, Wolf, what happened is that when the journalists were in Baghdad in the month before the war, they were staying at the Rasheed Hotel and they were operating and functioning out of the Iraqi information ministry.
Then, the U.S. told them that these two sites, these two locations might be hit by coalition forces because they may suspect that they're Iraqi command and control centers and journalists were advised to leave these two locations.
So, many journalists left the Rasheed Hotel and they went to different hotels in town; however, the Iraqi information ministry did not allow the journalists to move their satellite dishes and their equipment to anywhere except for the Palestine Hotel.
So, de facto most of the journalists ended up shifting and moving their locations from the Iraqi information ministry to the Palestine Hotel, and then we saw this incident where there was a tank shell that was fired by the Marines into the hotel where two journalists were killed and that caused a lot of anger and a lot of concern among many against - many accused the Marines of doing it deliberately or recklessly.
However, following that incident it became as if the Palestine Hotel became secured from such attack because everybody rose hell when that thing happened, and when the Marines came in town they were first on the western side of the Tigris and then when they crossed to the eastern side they came to this square and they came here, so many tanks from every direction.
And then we had that scene where the people were bringing down the statue of Saddam Hussein and I think, I am not sure why the Marines picked it, but it may be just a de facto that the journalists were here. The Marines came to the square. There are two hotels here. This is called the Palestine Regent (ph) Hotel and next to it is the Sheraton Hotel.
So, many journalists are staying here. There is enough room for the journalists and the Marines. Actually, many rooms are occupied by three or four people now because there's over occupancy but it may be that the fact that the journalists stayed here because they thought that this would be a safe place now that the Marines know it very well following that shooting incident and they're not going to do it again.
The Iraqis didn't mind the journalists staying here. The Marines came to where all the journalists were in Baghdad and that's where the journalists actually broadcast the live pictures of the fall of Baghdad and the fall of the Iraqi regime. So, this may be a de facto thing resulting from the first time that the Iraqi information ministry said that journalists are only allowed to operate outside the ministry at the Palestine and that was the only place - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, please stand by for a minute. I want to recap once again for our viewers.
They call it small arms fire but it's been extensive. It certainly can be very deadly. It's been unfolding for more than an hour now near the Palestine Hotel in downtown Baghdad. That's the hotel where the foreign press are based. It's also the hotel where there are a lot of U.S. Marines based in Baghdad, right at the center of the town where that square, where they took Saddam Hussein's statue the other day and dramatically ripped it off and a lot of our viewers, of course, watched that live on CNN as well.
Jamie McIntyre is our Pentagon Correspondent, our Senior Pentagon Correspondent. He's watching all of this. Jamie, I want to play some videotape that we got live here on CNN just a little while ago of an individual clearly apprehended by U.S. Marines. Narrate what you see on the screen. Give our viewers a sense, perspective of what this may be.
MCINTYRE: Well, I have to say it's very difficult for me to say from this far away. I mean I'm only seeing the same pictures that you're seeing but we see they're taking somebody into custody and they've probably secured him using those plastic handcuffs. They're very popular now to use those instead of metal handcuffs. Apparently he's been disarmed and being taken away and, you know, that's basically all you can say.
I would say, though, one thing we should keep in mind is that this is a situation where the television can be a little bit - give a little bit of a distorted picture about what's going on. I mean not to minimize what's happening in Baghdad, which is clearly a dangerous situation for the Marines involved there.
But at the same time according to all the sources of information we have, there's a lot of robust military activity taking place in Tikrit where we do not have cameras, and while we're focused on this relatively minor incident, although again not to minimize the danger that's happening in downtown Baghdad because we can see it and we can watch it live.
What we're not able to show you is what's going on in what may be the last battleground of this Gulf War and that is U.S. Marines advancing on Tikrit tonight with heavy armor, helicopter gun ships, and also close air support there. So, there is likely a fairly robust and major battle going underway even if they're not meeting too much resistance in Tikrit which the U.S. military doesn't expect to meet. Nevertheless, we can see even in a city like Baghdad, which has essentially been conquered, there is still resistance, still danger to U.S. troops.
All of this to say that what Tommy Franks said is that he is not close to declaring an end to the combat operations phase of what's going on in Iraq. There are also a great number of places in Iraq where there have been no U.S. troops yet, large portions of the country that aren't highly populated but areas where the U.S. has yet to go into. So, it may be not just days but clearly weeks before the United States is able to say that peace of some kind has come to Iraq - Wolf.
BLITZER: Jamie, we just got some videotape from Al-Jazeera, the Arabic language satellite channel of three individuals apparently who have now, additional three individuals who have been taken into custody surrounding this event, in connection with this event. You can see them now being removed. When you look at these pictures, Jamie, what do you see? They've obviously been pinned down on the ground and they're being apprehended pretty severely - Jamie.
MCINTYRE: Well, obviously these are suspects if they don't know for sure that these are people who were threatening U.S. forces, then those were clearly people that they suspected of doing that.
You know, again, from this distance away there's no way for us to be able to tell precisely what level of information they had or whether they were able to witness these people threatening U.S. troops or firing on U.S. troops or whether these were people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but clearly enough of a threat perceived by the U.S. Marines that they have detained those people and taken them into custody.
BLITZER: Now, we're getting similar pictures from the other Arabic language satellite channel Al-Arabiya. That first picture, I don't know if we can show that to our viewers again, of that individual clearly apprehended, bare-chested, being removed by U.S. authorities, Marines we believe, apprehended.
When I saw that individual, Jamie and Rula, I wanted to bring you in on this as well, Rula Amin is on the scene, the first thing that went through my mind when I saw this individual not wearing a shirt is what the Israelis often do when they apprehend someone they suspect could be a suicide bomber. They make them take off their clothes, if you will, to make sure there's no bombs being hidden in a vest or anything of that nature.
Jamie, first to you, is that the impression that's possible in this case, given the sensitivity of suicide bombers? You apprehend somebody. The first thing you do before you even get close to him is you make him take off his shirt.
MCINTYRE: Well, that's a very real danger, Wolf. They have had some suicide bombers. We have seen instances where Iraqi citizens have been forced to, if not take off their clothes, at least lift their shirt or demonstrate in some other way that they don't have concealed weapons or bombs before the U.S. troops get close to them.
That very well may be what was happening there. We just don't know. We do know it's a very real threat. Suicide bombers including discovery of specially constructed vests and steel balls in them with remote-controlled detonators that the U.S. military found in a school.
It does seem from watching it again from this distance that some of the - maybe Rula Amin can fill us in on this, that some of the shooting has died down. It does appear now that they've taken some people into custody and this incident may be wrapping up, but I would defer to our reporter on the scene who might have a closer, a better idea of what's exactly going on.
AMIN: Wolf, it should be (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
BLITZER: Well, that's a good idea, Jamie. Let's bring back Rula Amin. You're right there. Rula, go ahead. Sorry for interrupting but go ahead and maybe you get a sense. Has this incident died down or is it still underway?
AMIN: It seems that it is dying down because we're seeing less Marines in the square, in the circle just outside the hotel, and I was just watching the Marines inside the vicinity of the hotel. They seem pretty relaxed. They were just walking around individually. They didn't seem to be on high alert.
But, again, referring to that guy without, with his - without a shirt on, that is significant, Wolf, and probably that is a move by the Marines in order to make sure that these guys are not suicide bombers. There is a cause for - there is a real cause for alarm here among the Marines especially that we do know that in the past few days they found at one school about 50 professionally manufactured vests.
Those vests are very similar to the photographers' vests. They were filled with explosives and there was a detonation button that one can use in order to detonate those explosives, and what caused the alarm is not only that these were professionally made but the fact that there were 100 hangars and they were only able to find about 30 to 40 vests. That means that there's about 50 vests that are out there somewhere with some people and they may be still determined to use them.
So, that is why the Marines are very much suspicious when they arrest anybody or when they have suspects that they think they may still be determined to inflict damage among the troops. We have seen suicide bombing attempts. We do know that the Iraqis have spoken about this.
I remember Saeed al-Sahaf, the Information Minister, he was once asked about this. The way the question was posed for him he was told that you are accused of using the suicide bombing techniques and you may resort to it, and he said, you know, that we haven't even started yet, and they were very proud of the fact that they will use it. So, and especially that we know that there are at least Arab volunteers, maybe some of them have been part of the Mujahadeen. We don't know but it is a very significant scene and probably that is the reason behind it, the suspicion that there may be some suicide bombers trying to inflict damage among the Marines - Wolf.
BLITZER: All right, Rula, I think you're making some excellent points for our viewers, high sensitivity that there could be suicide bombers out there. The first order of business if you suspect someone might have some explosives under their shirt in a vest or whatever you make him take it off, perhaps, and we're just speculating, perhaps that's why we saw that one individual apprehended by U.S. Marines walking without a shirt.
I know from my experience reporting from Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, that's what the Israelis often do when they suspect someone may have one of those suicide bomb vests or outfits underneath clothes. They make everyone take off their shirt to make sure that there are no such vests.
And, as General Tommy Franks told me today when I interviewed him, there have been several hundred of these vests that have been found by U.S. troops, vests including explosives, ball bearings to make those explosives even more deadly, if in fact the suicide bomber goes ahead.
We're getting some more tape now from Al-Arabiya, which is one of the Arab language satellite channels showing some arrest. Jamie McIntyre, one of the suggestions from Al-Arabiya is that these individuals may actually have been arrested inside, repeat inside the Palestine Hotel, which would raise a lot of alarm bells, not only for the Marines who are inside that hotel but also among the journalists who are inside that hotel.
Jamie, tell us what you're seeing in these pictures and what they say to you.
MCINTYRE: Well, again, it's - I'm at the disadvantage of watching this from so far away. All we can see is that they clearly believe that these three individuals were posing a threat in some way to U.S. forces.
They have been handcuffed with the plastic handcuffs that are used by the U.S. military. They can carry those around in great numbers and they're very effective for binding hands behind them and they are holding them at gunpoint, and aside from that there's really no way for me without going into the area of wild speculation to ascertain what is actually going on there.
BLITZER: We don't want you to go into the area of wild speculation. I will bring back Rula Amin, our reporter. She's there at the scene at the Palestine Hotel looking over this incident.
Rula, it's been underway for about an hour and a half. Do you definitely get the distinct impression that it's over with? We haven't heard any gunfire now in I'm guessing at least 20 minutes or so and we haven't seen any flares in the past 20 minutes or so. Are you getting any additional information from troops on the ground?
AMIN: No. The troops on the ground are not talking yet; however, as you said, the firefight, the shooting has died down. The soldiers, the Marines we can see here from the top of the roof are - they seem pretty relaxed. They were just going around their business as if the whole thing is over. But from where I'm standing we can not see the whole circle.
It's a huge roof here at the Palestine Hotel and most of the journalists are standing at different points, so what I'm seeing is different from what Al-Arabiya people are seeing, is different from what Al-Jazeera Arab satellite channel are seeing, so I think we're all putting all our information together and trying to put the picture on what has happened and if this incident is done.
Again, this incident seems now very significant because this is so close to the Palestine Hotel, the base for the Marines and the journalists, but we do know that throughout the day in Baghdad there are these sporadic fights and the Marines don't seem to make too much out of them because they think they are not organized and there is - they're not very dangerous in terms that they think they can overcome them because it's mostly individuals.
Some of them are not Iraqis and they don't know the street very well and they are - so, it's easier to arrest them or trying to silence their fire and that's why we think that the Marines we see here at the hotel seem to be relaxed and they seem to think that their control over Baghdad is relatively firm and that it's only going in the direction they desire - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, as far as you know, this kind of firefight that we've reported on now for the past hour, hour and a half here on CNN, dramatic pictures, arrests, flares, a lot of volleys of gunfire, very, very loud that we've heard here on CNN. These, I assume, are going on throughout Baghdad, although we don't necessarily have cameras and reporters recording what's going on. Is that your sense, that these are relatively common, these exchanges, these firefights throughout the Iraqi capital, which is a huge city of some 5 million people?
AMIN: I wouldn't use common, but I wouldn't say irregular. They are sporadic. Sometimes there is two or three hours between one firefight and another, in different neighborhoods in Baghdad. And we have to remember that the Marines are not all over. They are still some neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital that the Marines have not been there yet. Today, for example, we saw them in one of the allara (ph) street. And it was their first time to patrol those streets. And they were actually trying patrol the streets in order to stop the looters, after residents in Baghdad have been complaining that the Marines are not doing anything to stop the looters.
So, again, the Marines are not all over Baghdad. There are still streets they haven't been in. They have to be careful going into certain areas. Some streets are very narrow, residential areas. They don't know who lives there. We do know that many of the Republican Guards that were deployed on the streets of Baghdad, just the night before the Marines really took over, the Republican Guard, Fedayeen Saddam, those are paramilitary forces, and ruling Baath party militias, those people were still there on the streets by the thousands, and they disappeared in one night. Many of them got rid of their uniforms. And I think the U.S. officials are still not sure if all of these people did really give up the fight, or are they preparing to do some kind of underground resistance, in some way trying to take revenge for what happened, or trying still -- they believe in the battle. And they think they should fight the U.S. forces.
And another point, that even that now we do see people welcoming the Marines, thanking the U.S. for removing Saddam Hussein, we still hear from many people here in Baghdad who tell you that they are thankful, that they want to make sure that the Marines will leave Iraq. And that if they don't do that very soon, they will defy them, because then they will perceive them as an occupying force. So it depends on what happens in the next few weeks, how things will unfold, in whether we will see these kind of fights and military conflict, whether it will weather away or will it actually escalate - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula Amin, our reporter in Baghdad who's been helping us better understand what's been going on over the past hour and a half or so. Rula Amin at the Palestine Hotel, the hotel that houses not only the foreign press, hundreds of American and other foreign reporters in Baghdad, camera crews, but also the U.S. Marines who are based in that central part of Baghdad at the Palestine Hotel. Over the past hour and a half or so, we've seen this firefight that's been going on. We haven't heard anything lately. We haven't heard any shots explode. We haven't seen any of those flares that we have seen.
We haven't seen any additional arrests that we did see so much over the past hour and a half. But it's been a dramatic, pretty nerve-wracking few moments. Not just a few moments, considerable moments, for individuals at the Palestine Hotel. And, as we say, there's a lot of Marines and a lot of Western reporters at that hotel.
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Aired April 13, 2003 - 17:00 Â ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: They're free, acting on a tip U.S. Marines find seven American POWs. Their families are ecstatic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want you to know that your son has been found.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I appreciate it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: The last battle, Marines fight Iraqi diehards in Saddam Hussein's hometown. CNN's Brent Sadler and crew got there before them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK, that's gunfire. OK. Under attack, under attack.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: A stunning victory at hand, but still undeclared. A commander talks of his toughest moments.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS, CENTRAL COMMAND: The times that are the worst are when we confirm that we've had people killed in this war.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: Ahead my conversation with General Tommy Franks on this, day 25 of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: CNN live this hour, WOLF BLITZER REPORTS. With correspondents from around the world. WOLF BLITZER REPORTS starts now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Good evening from Doha, Qatar. This is the temporary headquarters of General Tommy Franks and his Central Command. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting live.
Seven Americans taken prisoner of war early on in the conflict. They're now out of Iraq. Their ordeal is over, their freedom a matter of serendipity.
Good luck, acted upon with lightning speed, it didn't begin as a rescue operation. U.S. Marine units were approaching Tikrit preparing for the battle for that city when a Marine reconnaissance battalion got to the nearby town of Samarra, a policeman asked them if they'd comfort for the prisoners.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Iraqis came up to American military and said that there are seven Americans at this location. And it was about, oh, six or eight kilometers south of Tikrit, and that you should go get the. And they did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: The Marines were led to a building in Samarra guarded by Iraqi soldiers who had been abandoned by commanders. The prisoners were promptly handed over. Reporter Matthew Fisher of the "National Post" of Canada was in the area.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATHEW FISHER, "NATIONAL POST": The Americans, the Marines were astonished. They were taken and found the prisoners, and immediately they broke into tears. There was an incredible joy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: As the news trickled out after 7:00 Eastern time this morning, CNN's Bob Franken was among the first with word of the rescue and the prisoners' condition.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We have now confirmed the number is seven. And we also have new information, as you can imagine this is trickling out, we are now told that two of them suffered gunshot wounds. We do not know the extent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: The two wounded POWs were able to walk under their own power. All the former prisoners and their Iraqi guards were taken to Kuwait where they will be debriefed. The pictures of these seven young people have become familiar to us over the past three weeks. Two of them, Army Chief Warrant Officers Ronald Young and David Williams were captured when their Apache helicopter went down south of Baghdad on March 24th. The other five were from the now well known Army 507th Maintenance Company, PFCs Jessica Lynch's unit based in Fort Bliss, Texas. Sergeant James Riley, Private First Class Patrick Miller, Specialist Edgar Hernandez, Joseph Hudson and Shoshana Johnson captured after their unit was ambushed near Nasiriya three weeks ago today. Now the families of all seven finally seeing new pictures of their loved ones. As you can imagine, it's a very, very joyous occasion for the families of these soldiers. We have reporters with some of them. CNN's Susan Candiotti is in Georgia. CNN's Whitney Casey is in New Jersey. Whitney, let's begin with you. Go ahead.
WHITNEY CASEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, they've been here all day. And they've said he's stubborn and he's a work alcoholic. And they just got off the phone with their son for the very first time since February. So with no further ado let's hear what he had to say. Jane and Athol Riley. You were just on the phone with your son James for the first time. First of all, I know you sort of said kind of, satirically, that he's tired of chicken and rice and what else.
JANE RILEY, JAMES RILEY'S MOTHER: That's what he said.
CASEY: He said that.
J. RILEY: Yes, he said no chicken, no rice. He didn't tell me what else he wanted to eat.
CASEY: What else did he say?
J. RILEY: That he was tired and there was a lot of stuff going through his mind, which I would imagine there would be. And, basically, that was it.
CASEY: Before we have some video of you getting on the phone, and before you were about to speak with him, you had a conversation with an officer there that was near your son. And there was a delicate subject that you had to talk about, and delicate in terms of the fact that even with this emotion, the euphoria is mixed with a bit of pain because of your daughter's death. Your daughter died three days after you found out, three days before? So tell us what you find out and then you tell your son. It was the first time he found out.
J. RILEY: They didn't want us to tell him. But then he asked how his sister was. So then when we completed the conversation, I said -- I'm sorry, I don't know his rank, last name is Craft (ph) ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Captain.
J. RILEY: ... did we have -- captain he says.
CASEY: It's okay. It's been a long day for this family.
J. RILEY: Anyway, so we wanted to speak to him again, so we did. So then we told him that he had asked about her and we had lied and told him ...
ATHOL RILEY, FATHER OF JAMES RILEY: Well, we didn't answer.
J. RILEY: We didn't lie lie, we didn't really answer. We just said she is asleep, which she is permanently. So then he said we may as well tell him.
CASEY: Then you told him. A. RILEY: I did.
J. RILEY: Then my husband told him. And I just put my three cents in.
CASEY: It must have been really hard.
A. RILEY: Well, he already knew that she was sick. And as I explained, the last couple of weeks, she was only kept alive by machine. So that certainly was no way to live.
CASEY: But your son was happy?
A. RILEY. Yes, he's happy ...
J. RILEY: He sounded happy.
A. RILEY: Happy.
J. RILEY: Tired.
A. RILEY: He said that he wished it had never happened, but it did so he's just got to make the best of it.
CASEY: And you guys have been great. I'm going to let you move on along and get back in, and really get back to the feeling of talking to your son. But thank you so much. And Wolf, we're going to toss it back to you, because we're going to let this family move on with their life hopefully. And they look forward to their son coming home. And they also say right when he comes home they're going to put him to work. And some things around the house need fixing, so back to normal.
BLITZER: All right, Whitney Casey with a very, very happy family. Bittersweet to a certain degree, as you point, out but we're happy for the family as well. Sergeant James Riley will be returning to New Jersey, probably sooner rather than later.
Let's now join Susan Candiotti. She is in Georgia with another very, very happy family, the family of Army pilot Ronald Young, Jr. - Susan.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Wolf. It's been a roller coaster ride for this family since this ordeal began three weeks ago, but now finally it is nearing an end. Certainly with wonderful news today, I'm joined now by the parents of Ronald Young, Kaye Young and his father Ronald Young, Sr. Now 15 minutes ago, you got off the phone with your son. Kaye, a mother gets the first crack to talk to her son. You did first. What did you say to him and he to you?
KAYE YOUNG, RONALD YOUNG JR.'S MOTHER: I don't know. I told him that I said hey. He said, how you all doing? And I said we're fine. And I told him I loved him and that we missed him and we've been praying for him. And I don't know, it was just ...
CANDIOTTI: How did he say he was feeling? K. YOUNG: He said he was feeling good. He said he was fine.
CANDIOTTI: And, Ron, you had a chance to ask him too how he was treated?
RON YOUNG SR., RONALD YOUNG JR.'s FATHER: Well, I just asked him, did they feed him pretty good while he was over there. He said yeah, right. He said he had diarrhea from the water over there and he lost 20 pounds. I also asked him, I said, well, they're giving you something to eat now aren't they? He said, oh, yeah, these guys are really treating us right.
CANDIOTTI: Did you have any sense that he has any idea about the amount of attention that is on him now?
K. YOUNG: No, he doesn't at all. Matter of fact, he said, well, who's there, because he could hear the noise in the background, everybody cheering when he answered the phone. And he has no idea.
R. YOUNG, SR: I don't think he does.
K. YOUNG: None.
R. YOUNG SR: Which is good.
CANDIOTTI: Exactly. I know you told him that when you have a chance to see him next, you're going to do what?
K. YOUNG: I'm going to sit and hug him for about a half an hour. He said great.
CANDIOTTI: He can't wait for that. And as a father, I know, did you have a chance to say anything else to him and exchange with him ...
R. YOUNG, JR: Not a whole lot. The phone was going dead when I finally got to talk to him, but that's about the main gist of my conversation with him. Like I told him, I said, well, hang in there. I said, we sure do miss you. He said, well, I miss you too.
CANDIOTTI: Overall, what has this day been like for you?
R. YOUNG, SR: It's been the greatest day in my life. That's what it's been for me. It's just like a dream come true. It really has.
CANDIOTTI: And, as you said, when you get a chance to see him and you, Kaye, hug him, and you the father give him a talking to about continuing on, I'm sure he'd probably love to keep on flying, what do you think about that?
R. YOUNG SR: Well, I hope he'll take a little break from it before he gets right back in there. And I don't know, I don't know what the Army has in store for him or plans for him, or nothing else. So I don't believe that he would probably go right back into it, but again, you can never tell I guess. Well, he'll do whatever he's ordered to do. K. YOUNG: We were told they may send him for a little awhile. And they may send him back over there. But you know, I'm not worried about going -- this couldn't happen twice.
CANDIOTTI: And they told you he'll be coming home to the United States fairly soon?
K. YOUNG: Right.
R. YOUNG, SR: Yeah, uh-huh.
K. YOUNG: He'll be here maybe in the next few days, three or four days.
R. YOUNG: I hope. I'd like to see him. I really would.
CANDIOTTI: And to those who rescued him?
R. YOUNG, SR: Thanks, thanks for everything.
K. YOUNG: You know I just had a call from one of the fathers of one of the sons that rescued him. And he said I did not know, his last name was Reed. It was Carrie Reed, and father and son had the same name. And he said that he did not know if his son was all right until he realized that they were rescuing Ron and the other guys. And he told me how happy he was to know that his son's all right. So there's another blessing that's come out of this.
R. YOUNG, SR: See, I got a call from a Briar family that their son was in on the rescue too. He was in that first layer Marine division. I'm not exactly sure what division, 4th. It was the 4th Delta ...
K. YOUNG: It doesn't matter.
R. YOUNG, SR: Anyway. But he said, he talked to me quite awhile. And he was just, you know, thankful that things went like they were and, you know ...
CANDIOTTI: Did he know any of the details?
R. YOUNG, SR: No, he really didn't know nothing more than we did, because he saw it on television. But he said that he just wanted to talk to us and tell us how much he -- how appreciative he was for the sacrifice that all the guys were making over there. And you know, I told him I watched too. And I would forever be indebted to his son for bringing him home, and I feel that way too. I feel like that's the way you've got to feel about this because they did go in there and get them. And it said on thing, what really got me, it said on the news that they had applauded them, whenever they got them out of there. And, you know, I tell you what, I know it was a good feeling for all of them just to get away from that, I'm sure.
CANDIOTTI: Well, thank you very much for joining us. And we also know that you received good news that at least two of you will be able to fly over there to Washington to see him in person when he arrives at Walter Read Hospital. And, additionally, I know other people are trying to kick in extra funds for, perhaps, other family members who might be able to go as well. You have two other sons, and two daughters and a lot of other family members, as well.
R. YOUNG SR: That's right.
CANDIOTTI: Our best wishes to you.
K. YOUNG: Thank you.
CANDIOTTI: Thank you very much.
K. YOUNG: Everybody's been so kind and we love you all. And we love everyone that has prayed for us and kept us in their prayers. And I will just never be able to repay this country.
CANDIOTTI: Thank you for letting us be a part of your lives. I appreciate it. All the best to you and to your son.
And so, pretty soon they'll be heading up to Washington, clearly a very happy family here, and a lot of celebrations to come. Back to you, Wolf.
BLITZER: Susan Candiotti, a happy flight from Georgia to the nation's capital in Washington, D.C. Thanks very much, Susan. Congratulate those family members from all of us, as well.
Even while Susan was speaking with those loved ones, a reminder that the war is not yet over, certainly not even in Baghdad. Within the past few minutes, we've seen some flares over Baghdad, not far from the Palestine Hotel. It's become a familiar landmark in recent days. That's where most of the international correspondents are based. Looks like there's another firefight going on there. We'll have a live report coming up from Baghdad later this hour.
In the meantime, more on those seven freed POWs. We saw happy families in New Jersey, and Georgia. In Texas, an especially happy family, the family of Shoshana Johnson. CNN's Ed Lavandera is in El Paso.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ken Krueger (ph) used to serve in the Army with Shoshana Johnson's father. As soon as he heard the news that is buddy's daughter had been rescued, he drove right over to celebrate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yee-haw!
LAVANDERA: For three weeks, the Johnson family had waited for word about 30-year-old Shoshana. Two days ago, the family attended a memorial service at Fort Bliss for nine of her fellow soldiers killed in an early morning ambush in southern Iraq. The Johnson family held on to hope. They've described Shoshana as a fighter who's always made it through the toughest times. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are ecstatic that not only she is safe, but all the POWs are back in the U.S.'s hands. We thank God for watching over them. We are very grateful for all the worldwide prayers.
LAVANDERA: Johnson is the daughter of a Gulf War veteran. She joined the Army five years ago working as a chef for the 507th Maintenance Company. Now her family and friends can prepare for a hero's return and one of Shoshana's home cooked meals.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on home soon, Shoshana!
LAVANDERA (on camera): The day after Shoshana Johnson was taken as a prisoner of war, one of the Johnson family neighbors had these signs made up, "Shana, you're our hero." And if you look across the street at the Johnson family home, it says "Bring Shoshana home." A simple prayer that they've been praying for three weeks now. And it looks like that dream will be coming true.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, El Paso, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: And for more on the rescued POWs, please join us tonight for a CNN special 8:00 p.m. Easter, 5:00 Pacific. That will be a one- hour special "The Rescued POWs."
The battle for Saddam Hussein's hometown. It was a dramatic development. Earlier today, a CNN crew comes under fire on the way out. Then the real fighting begins. We'll get the latest on the last major holdout in Iraq.
Also, restoring order where there was disorder. Baghdad's uphill road to stability.
And General Tommy Franks, the man behind the Iraqi war plan talks to me one-on-one. Is it time to declare victory? Find out what he has to say.
But first, these images of absolute joy shot as families of the POWs got the very good news.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SADLER: OK, that's gunfire. OK, we've just come under attack. Under attack. We're okay. We're okay. Under fire. That confirms.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: CNN's Brent Sadler had a harrowing experience earlier today in Tikrit.
But we have some breaking news we want to report. This just in from our senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre. One of Saddam Hussein's half brothers, half brothers is now in U.S. custody after attempting to escape along the border to Syria. This is what a U.S. official is telling CNN's Jamie McIntyre. You are looking at a picture of Watban Ibrahim Hasan Al-Tikriti. He's the half brother, one of the half brothers, of Saddam Hussein. He was listed among the top 55 most wanted Iraqi leaders by the U.S. Central Command here in Doha, Qatar, only yesterday.
Let's get some more details now. Jamie McIntyre is standing by live at the Pentagon - Jamie.
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, we are just confirmed from a U.S. official that they believe they do, in fact, have this man who is identified as one of Saddam Hussein's half brothers in custody. It's not clear whether he was captured by U.S. forces or captured by someone else and turned over to the U.S. forces. We're told that he was brought into custody trying to cross the border into Syria. And U.S. officials believe that there may be a number of senior Iraqi leaders who are on that top 55 list of most wanted who may have crossed into Syria, emphasis on the "may." A senior intelligence official told me today they're not sure anyone is there for certain.
But they do believe that Syria is harboring some of the Iraqi leadership. As one official said to me, perhaps not any names you would recognize. But this does appear to be one of Saddam Hussein's half brothers. He is also, another half brother of Saddam Hussein was also targeted in a strike earlier this month. And the list also includes another individual who's listed as Saddam Hussein's maternal half brother. So at this point, it does appear that at least one of the 55 most wanted is in U.S. custody, according to this U.S. official - Wolf.
BLITZER: Very interesting, Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon. We'll be standing by to get some more details from you. Of course, Jamie McIntyre, our senior Pentagon correspondent.
The U.S. Marines, CNN has now confirmed, have indeed moved into the ancestral hometown of the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, that hometown namely being Tikrit. CNN's Brent Sadler was also there earlier today, had a little bit of a harrowing experience, himself. Brent is joining us now live from nearby Erbil - Brent.
BRENT SADLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Wolf. Yes, indeed. The U.S. Marines have now advanced to Tikrit. They have already engaged Iraqis defending that city. We're not quite sure where the Marines are located at the moment, but certainly there have been firefights around the city. Let me take you back before the Marines arrived. We have maneuvered ourselves, the previous 24 hours, to be able to get to the outskirts of Tikrit. And first of all, we were able to get a really close up view of some of the major military complexes that are around Tikrit, that have been the subject of intense coalition bombing in the buildup to this Marine advance on the ancestral hometown of Saddam Hussein.
Vast warehouses filled with ammunition, packed with armored vehicles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, a lot of it intact. but a lot of it also dilapidated after years of neglect and under funding of the Iraqi army as a result of the crippling sanctions over the past 12 years. It was also interesting that we were able to get inside very easily. There were no guards, no defenses. Inside a Republican Guard headquarters of a tank unit, it was interesting there to see that all the heavy equipment, all the fighting machines had been moved. We don't know if it was at the beginning of the coalition campaign almost a month ago, or just before this Marine move against Tikrit.
What we do know is the Marines firepower took out five advancing Republican Guard tanks towards them. And this after a very difficult time when we got inside Tikrit and came under gunfire, as you know. We got in there, got out quickly, but not before vehicles were riddled with gunfire. No serious injuries, thankfully - Wolf.
BLITZER: Brent, you say no serious injuries. There were some minor injuries, maybe briefly tell us about that.
SADLER: Our driver certainly sustained a head wound that required bandaging at the scene. The vehicle here was riddled with half a dozen bullets on this one. The other vehicle was also hit. Our producer Maria Fleet was wearing a flack jacket, part of our CNN standard training we go through. That took a shot on the right shoulder. The flack jacket absorbed it. The bullet bounced off. Maria Fleet is fine. Nobody seriously injured.
BLITZER: Thank God for that flack jacket. Brent Sadler with our team in northern Iraq, in Erbil, lived through quite an ordeal today. Brent was cool, though, under fire. Appreciate it very much, Brent. Thank you.
Meanwhile let's go back to Baghdad right now. We'll show you some pictures of what's going on. A firefight in downtown Baghdad, the center of the city. Looking at these live pictures of the flares in the Iraqi capital, right now. It looks like this firefight is still underway. We're told it's not far from the Palestine Hotel. That's the hotel, of course, that houses so many of the international reporters who have now gathered on the Iraqi capital. I believe CNN's Rula Amin is joining us now live with what she -- actually, we'll go to Rula Amin right after a quick commercial break. We'll get a live update what's happening on the streets of Baghdad. And also later, my interview with the commander of Operations Iraqi Freedom, General Tommy Franks. We spent time together earlier today at Camp al-Saliyah, the temporary headquarters of the Central Command. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: You're looking at live pictures of downtown Baghdad, a city still with considerable amount of trouble. There's a firefight going on not far from the Palestine Hotel. That's the hotel where so many of the foreign press are based.
CNN's Rula Amin is at the Palestine Hotel. She is joining us now live on the phone.
Rula, from your vantage point, tell us what you see and what you hear. What's going on? RULA AMIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, we are on the roof of the Palestine Hotel. But we can't be on camera because we were asked by the soldiers to turn all the lights off, including the mosque lights. The firefight seems to take place right at the circle outside the Palestine Hotel. We heard some sniper shots, then there were more shots coming from the Marine side. They were very close to us. And then we saw some Marines firing some flare shots, obviously, trying to pinpoint where the fire was coming at, from where was the fire coming at them from. And they were trying to find those guys.
Now, through different in the last probably half an hour, we heard many shots. Then it's quiet, then it's back again. We probably can hear it now. We can replay that tape for you. If you still have it. If you don't, again, it's outside the Palestine Hotel. Throughout the day, there are sporadic firefights throughout Baghdad, but again, they are sporadic. The Marines are saying they are facing little resistance, mostly unorganized resistance to the Marines' presence here so far.
Again, with the security situation so unstable, many residents are staying off the streets at night, and sometimes most of the day. As chaos is still in Baghdad, people are trying hard to find a way how to cope with it. At the same time, for the first time in years, Iraqis are trying to make their voices heard. We have seen today different groups trying to express its wishes on how the future of Iraq should be. Some at the mosque were calling for an Islamic republic. They were asking that Islam should be the rule here. The Islamic code should rule people's lives here.
We saw other people calling on the Marines to stop the looters, and actually protesting the fact that the Marines are not stopping the looters. Others were calling - saying, down, down (UNINTELLIGIBLE). So it's different voices. It's small groups, but most of them, again, for the first time, it's the first time in decades that they are able to go on the streets and make their voices heard, express their wishes, demonstrate, protest. It's very significant to see these scenes in Baghdad, and so early after so little time, after Saddam Hussein had fell - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, how unusual is it to have this kind of a firefight so close to the Palestinian Hotel, not because it's the Palestine Hotel where the foreign press are based, but because U.S. Marines are at that hotel and around that hotel. And earlier we thought we were led to believe that it was relatively secure because the Marines were there. Is this will extraordinary what's going on right now?
AMIN: No, actually we have witnessed such firefights in the past few days. Just yesterday, there was some at noon, even heavier firefights. But the Marines seem to be, when you look at them here at the hotel, coming down the elevator, outside the gates, even on the streets in the circle, they seem to be relaxed. They feel that they have been able to control Baghdad one way or another, that all these firefights, all these shooting that's coming at them is actually very sporadic, very amateurish, and they can control it.
We spoke to one U.S. Marine today. He was on the streets. We were talking to him about the totally different story. And he was talking to his family on the phone, and they were trying to make sure that he's safe. And we could hear him safe, "I'm safe, no more shooting, they're not shooting at us again. And they can't get us." So it seems that the Marines here feel that they have done some pretty good job in securing the place for themselves, that there's not significant danger. And today we did hear from some U.S. officials saying it's not organized resistance that probably, so far, they have overcome most of the solid, real danger resistance that they could have envisioned. And so, these firefighters working hard to eliminate it.
We do know there are still some Arab volunteers. Those Arab volunteers came to Baghdad hoping to fight along with the Iraqi army in order to fight against the Americans to defend Iraq. However, the Iraqi army didn't fight in Baghdad. And they ended up here in Baghdad most of the time alone without Iraqi officers, and they don't note streets. But still, they still are holding on to their guns. And many times we did see Iraqis going to the Marines to tip them off on where these Arab volunteers are in order to catch them - Wolf.
BLITZER: Has there been any decrease, as far as you can tell, Rula, and we'll continue to show our viewers these live pictures of downtown Baghdad right now, not far from the Palestine Hotel. This is the center of the city close to where U.S. Marines, apparently, are pretty much in control, at least of this section of Baghdad. As far as you can tell, Rula, has there been a significant decrease in the amount of looting that we've seen in the Iraqi capital as compared to a few days ago?
AMIN: I wouldn't say there is significant decrease, but I would say there is more resistance to this looting. You have been seeing more substantial attempts by residents of Baghdad in order to stop the looters. People in different neighborhoods, just regular civilians, picking up arms, erecting barricades in their own neighborhoods stopping the looters. And in some cases, they were even stopping looters who were not coming to their own neighborhoods, just passing by, stopping them, confiscating their spoils and gathering all these spoils at the mosque. And they say they will return it to the next authority in Baghdad.
We also do know that the Marines today did arrest some looters, but still for most residents in Baghdad, it's not enough. Many of them are very happy that Saddam Hussein is gone, but they are very concerned about the chaos. And they say, it's the Marines, it's the U.S. who has removed Saddam Hussein. And they feel they should play some kind of role in order to put law and order back to Iraq - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, what do you see? What do you hear right now, if you can tell our viewers about this firefight near where you are, the Palestine Hotel? Is there anything you can make out from your vantage point on the roof of that building?
AMIN: Well, I'll tell you from the roof from, from where I'm standing, we can see the circle right outside the hotel. And we can see some U.S. Marines there walking around. They're not running, not panicking, but we do see them moving around there. And it's very quiet now. However, just a few minutes ago, it was really strong firefight very, very close to us. And all the lights, most of the lights on this roof where I'm standing, so many journalists are here doing live shots reporting the story. All of them have put their lights off, many of them, including us, put their flack jackets on, because it's really very close. And you never know where the fire is coming from. So one has to be very careful - Wolf.
BLITZER: Everybody I assume is walking around ...
AMIN: Now, hear that.
BLITZER: ... flack jackets? I heard that ...
AMIN: That's a flare. You can see, can you see the flare now? They just fired another flare. Obviously, they're trying to pinpoint where is this fire coming from. They're trying to see, is it from the buildings, is it from behind the buildings? There are some trees in this area. So, obviously, they're really working hard to try to find out where are those people who are shooting at them.
BLITZER: So what you're saying, Rula, is that the Marines are firing the flares to illuminate the skies, so they can better make out who may be shooting at them or at others. Is that your understanding, Rula of what's happening?
AMIN: That is the case. They're shooting the flares to illuminate the sky to be able to see what is happening. Again, there are not a lot of troops here. They don't control every street. And the Marines don't go into any neighborhood. They have to be careful as to where they go. There are some neighborhoods they haven't been into yet. And so, whenever they hear fire, they just can't go and run towards it. They try to detect. They try to determine where is it coming from, how many people are there, what kind of weapons they have before they make their move.
And, obviously, that's what's happening now, especially that it's night. Very few people on the streets, and in most Baghdad, there are -- there's power outage. So most of the buildings and the streets are dark and that makes it even harder for whoever -- easier for the people who want to shoot at the Marines and harder for the Marines to spot anybody - Wolf.
BLITZER: All right, Rula, we're going to continue to show our viewers these live pictures from downtown Baghdad where a firefight is going on. To our viewers who may just be joining us, if you see flares illuminate the skies, those are U.S. military flares. They're looking for individuals who are firing at U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. LBC, the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation reporting now from Baghdad that one Iraqi has been arrested in this incident which has now gone on for several minutes. Rula Amin will be standing by, gathering information for us, as well.
And as we show you these live pictures of Baghdad, I want to show you an interview that I conducted earlier today here in Doha, Qatar, at Camp al-Saliyah, that's the temporary headquarters of the U.S. Central Command. General Tommy Franks, the commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom, sat down with me, and we spoke about a wide range of issues. Here's part one of that interview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Let's go through the battlefield first. Then, we'll get into some of the other issues.
GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND: Sure.
BLITZER: Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's ancestral hometown. Is it over there?
FRANKS: I wouldn't say it's over, but I will say we have American forces in Tikrit right now.
BLITZER: And is there any resistance, organized military resistance?
FRANKS: When last I checked this force was moving on Tikrit, and there was not any resistance.
BLITZER: What does that say to you, the Republican Guard, the Special Republican Guard, the special security organizations, all of Saddam Hussein's military and police have crumbled?
FRANKS: One would like to think that. But I think we would be premature to say, well, gosh, it's all done, it's all finished. And, so, what we need to do is we need to complete -- well let me say it this way. There are several things we know. We know that the army has been destroyed. The Iraqi army has been destroyed. We know that there is no regime command and control in existence right now. We know that there are pockets of -- I've heard them referred to as everything from paramilitary to death squad to Fedayeen Saddam. We know there are pockets of that. We also know that there are pockets of foreigners in Iraq who have decided to fight to their last breath. And so until we have a sense that we have all of that under control, then we probably will not characterize the initial military phase as having been completed and the regime totally gone.
BLITZER: When you say foreigners, what do you mean by that?
FRANKS: From a number of countries, Syria, as well as a number of others. We have found and identified fighters from these countries. And they have come in as mercenaries. They have been paid by the Iraqis. We have seen recruiting material that has been passed out in a number of countries. People have signed up. They have been coming in over the last several months into Iraq. And they're employed as everything from suicide bombers to small group hit squads.
BLITZER: Is the Syrian government behind this?
FRANKS: Oh, my, goodness, that's not for me to say. I simply can identify the nationality of the people, but I wouldn't associate it with government sponsorship.
BLITZER: The word the other day was they found a lot of these suicide vests. FRANKS: Yes, I think 300 yesterday.
BLITZER: And they had explosives and timing devices.
FRANKS: That's correct and steel balls.
BLITZER: Where did they come from?
FRANKS: Don't know yet. Don't know yet. But it's an amazing thing when you walk in a school. You know, one of the things we're doing right now is getting the power back on, establishing water and all of that. And when you go in a school and you look around and what you find is 300 suicide vests, it's a rather shocking event. So I'm not sure of the origin yet, but we'll find out.
BLITZER: The battlefield we were talking about Tikrit, is that the remaining pocket, the most significant military challenge that you face on the battlefield?
FRANKS: If you associate military challenge with only the population centers, then this is the last of the major population centers that we know we want to control. But you know as well as I do that Iraq's a large country. And so there are lots of places in this country where we have not physically had our soldiers. And I think that's understandable given the fact we've only been at this about three weeks. We will go to all of them, Wolf.
BLITZER: There was no last stand from Saddam Hussein.
FRANKS: Absolutely not.
BLITZER: Where is Saddam Hussein.
FRANKS: I don't know. He's either dead or he's running a lot.
BLITZER: What's your hunch right now?
FRANKS: My boss doesn't permit me to have hunches, Wolf. He will simply be alive until I can confirm he's dead.
BLITZER: Are you looking for his DNA at that crater in Baghdad?
FRANKS: The appropriate people with the appropriate forensics are doing checks you would find appropriate in each of the places where we think we may have killed regime leadership.
BLITZER: Do you have DNA of Saddam Hussein?
FRANKS: Oh, of course, of course.
BLITZER: You do?
FRANKS: Of course.
BLITZER: So you'll be able to confirm, make a positive confirmation if, in fact, he was in that building? FRANKS: Well, unless remains were removed. I mean, one wouldn't ever want to say for sure 100 percent you can do anything. But what you should know is that we have the forensic capability to chase these things down, and we'll chase them down, every one of them all the way.
BLITZER: Weapons of mass destruction, so far there have been some initial tests that showed perhaps positive.
FRANKS: Right.
BLITZER: But as of this moment, as we speak right now, have you found any?
FRANKS: Two thousand, 3,000, well, I have not found any that I -- that I have absolutely satisfied myself are a weapon of mass destruction materials. But you're talking about 2,000, 3,000 perhaps distinct places in this country where we know we're going to go, and investigate each one of them. We may have on a given day somewhere between 5 and 10 or 15 site exploitations ongoing in a 24-hour period of time. In each one of these cases, we will take products, do testing and so forth. And in some cases, that testing will take, actually maybe as long as this war has been going on up to this point.
And so what we need to do, Wolf, is we need to have a very clear sense of expectation on this. The first thing that we wanted to do was fight this war. And I think we're reasonably well satisfied with where we see that right now, but we have a number of actions that have to go on in this country before we're going to say, okay, we've achieved what we wanted, which is to permit the Iraqi people to have a government of their choice so that they can reap the riches of this country.
BLITZER: On the weapons of mass destruction, so far there have been some initial positives. Have they turned out to be false positives or are you still in the midst of investigating some of the initial warheads and other evidence that you may have come across?
FRANKS: Wolf, the answer is yes, it's yes to both.
BLITZER: False positives.
FRANKS: We have seen false positives and we are also continuing the evaluation of a whole range of other weapon systems to be sure that they either are or are not WMD related.
BLITZER: Are you surprised almost a month into this war, you haven't come across some really hard evidence of what the inspectors used to call a smoking gun?
FRANKS: Not surprised at all. Let me ask you a question. Are you surprised that this regime, after everything that was said about it, has no army, has no navy and had no air force today?
BLITZER: I'll ask the questions, you give the answers.
(LAUGHTER) FRANKS: I think it's the same thing. I think we could be surprised or, perhaps, not be surprised. I'm not surprised, because I think as we said from the very beginning, some things in this effort will happen simultaneously and some things will happen sequentially. The full exploitation of this whole issue of weapons of mass destruction is something that is going to be sequential behind the security of all these sites that we need to get into.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: We're going to continue our interview with General Franks shortly. But I want to show our viewers these live pictures from Baghdad. We've been monitoring what has been going on near the Palestine Hotel, that is where the international press corps, most of it at least is based. There was a firefight there. We heard gunfire going up. We also saw flares illuminate the skies over the area. U.S. troops clearly searching for the source of that gunfire. U.S. Marines in control of the area around the Palestine Hotel, certainly inside the Palestine Hotel itself. We will continue to watch this scene in Baghdad, bring some more information to you as we get it.
When we come back, though, part II of my special interview with General Tommy Franks. We'll speak about the next steps for the U.S.- led coalition. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: We'll get to part II of my interview with General Tommy Franks, the commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom shortly.
But I want to show our viewers some more of these live pictures from downtown Baghdad. There is a firefight underway. Apparently, according to our Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre, a search for some sort of sniper in the general vicinity of the Palestine Hotel. That's in the center of the Iraqi capital. That's also where the foreign press, most of the foreign press is based, including CNN's Rula Amin. She's on top of the roof over at the Palestine Hotel. Rula what do you see? What do you hear right now?
AMIN: Well, I'll tell you the latest, Wolf, is we just talked to Sergeant Gripple (ph) from the Marines, and he told us that there were about five guys in one building. And they have AKs. And they have been sniping, basically, at the Marines. They are trying to silence this fire. They are surrounding the place. We can see now that there is more lights from the roof of the Palestine Hotel directed towards that building. They are trying to get more lights. And we do see some Marines moving in the circle just outside the Palestine Hotel.
As you said, this is where the Marines are based and hundreds of western journalists. And, as I said, what he is telling us is that the case is that the firefight started when some of those guys, snipers shooting at the Marines. The Marines shot back. They defected where they are. They found it is about 200 meters away from where I am standing right now. And they think they know in which building they are. And they are surrounding that building - Wolf. BLITZER: And the flares that we saw illuminate the skies earlier, were shot up by the Marines or U.S. soldiers, perhaps, in order to help spot these guys in this building, these five guys. We have no idea who they may be, paramilitary forces, irregulars, other fighters or whatever. No word, Rula, on whose these individuals firing at the U.S. Marines might be, is there?
AMIN: No, they don't know. And they think they are five, because I asked the sergeant. I said how do you know that they are five. He said, we think it's five people. And they shot these flares in order to be able to see what is around most of Baghdad. There is no electricity. The streets are very dark, and like almost every other building. So they needed the flares in order to be able to see. And it seems after they send these flares and through other methods, they were able to determine that those five people are in that building, 200 meters away from where I'm standing.
And now it seems that they are trying to put more light. In the beginning, they asked us to put all the lights off. And now they're actually directing - they are having more lights put up. And they are directing the lights in the direction of that building, obviously, trying to either surround them or make sure that nobody gets out of the building without them knowing it - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, it's approaching 2 a.m. in the Iraqi capital, I assume - and correct me if I'm wrong - that around this time of night, it gets relatively quiet in Baghdad, as opposed to perhaps during the daylight hours. But is that assumption wrong?
AMIN: Well, it does get quiet. However, this kind of firefights are not irregular. They are pretty sporadic. And they are not fierce. Most of the people the Marines are fighting with are individuals, small groups. It is not organized resistance. Most of what they have are either guns or AKs, not heavy weapons. So it is easier - for the Marines, it is easier for them to overcome such resistance than if people were using tanks or using machine guns. The sergeant just now reassured me. He said they do not have machine guns. He said it's only AKs. And he seemed confident that they have the situation under control. However, from - once in awhile, every few minutes, we do hear some shots being fired - Wolf.
BLITZER: How big of a Marine presence around the hotel, in the hotel, do you estimate Rule that there is?
AMIN: Well, Wolf, it is very heavy, visible presence. We see them everywhere you go in the hotel. Like, when you enter the hotel, right outside the hotel there are tanks. There are APCs. And there are Marines standing there, preventing anyone from coming into the hotel, unless they were journalists with the right accreditation. They have to have their press cards on. They have to check their picture. And only those people are allowed in. Most of the day, there are many Iraqis who try to come in to the hotel. Some of them want to sell the journalists their stories. Some of them are actually there to sell the Marines their stories, asking for helping on different issues. But they are not allowed into the hotel. The minute you pass the Marines from the outside gates, you still have more Marines inside, many tanks, many APCs. You see them outside the lobby, you see them inside the lobby. So many of them in the elevators. You can hear more fires now, but no flares. It is just shots. So I think - as I said before ...
BLITZER: More gunshots. We just heard, Rula, that gunshot. We just heard that gunshot. It was clearly audible to me and to all of our viewers. As well, you know, Rula, as we watch this firefight play itself out, presumably, US. Marines encountering some shots from what one sergeant told Rula - there was another, a few more shots right there. Five or so people holed up into a building firing at U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. As we watch this, as we listen at the shots being fired, Rula.
When I spoke earlier today with CNN's Christiane Amanpour at the Palestine Hotel where you are right now, she said there was supposed to be some sort of pilot project tomorrow, bringing back to work 150 or so Iraqi police officers to help patrol the city, to help stop the violence and the looting. Is there any change so far on that front? These police officers, obviously, 150 are not going to make a huge difference in a city of some 5 million. But it's a step. How significant Rula of a step is it?
AMIN: It is a very significant step Wolf, on many levels. First, many residents in Baghdad are very disturbed by all this looting. They feel that first it's their security, the security of their property and their lives that is threatened. Second, they're very proud people and they feel this is not the image they want to send about Iraq and Iraqis. They really hid the fact that these images are out there, just the day follows after Saddam Hussein is gone. At the same time, we spoke to them.
Yesterday I was on the streets talking to many people in different neighborhoods. And I asked them, what do you think if the old police came back, the same policemen who used to work for the Iraqi government. And they said you know what? We don't mind because we need anything, we need to see some concrete steps on the streets to make sure people know there is law and order here. Otherwise, it will be chaos and just deteriorate. So, they didn't have a lot of faith that the old policemen will be able to stabilize things very much.
However, they thought that would be a significant step in that direction. And they said they welcome it. Most of the people we spoke to said they welcome it. I didn't speak to one person who opposed that. However, I do remember at one point, I was talking to someone and he said, yes, we would like to see the police come back and the security forces, and like three people interrupted him and said not the security forces. Only the police. Obviously, because they have suffered from these security forces. And to them, that was something that's out of the question.
At the same time, it also tells you that there is some kind of willingness among the people and among the U.S. Marines that are here. or whoever is going to organize Iraq in the coming few months, to use the former bureaucratic structure that Iraq used to have. Today, we also heard that in the south, the Marines and the U.N. agencies were asking former Iraqi bureaucrats, civilians who used to work in administrative posts to come along, to come forward and maybe try to help in bringing water and different supplies to Iraqis who need it so badly. The Marines cannot do all this on their own and they do need desperately the help from the Iraqis and from the old system - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, as you look at the -- you've been a visitor to Baghdad, obviously, many times over the years. Tell our viewers what the difference was between Iraqi police officers who were patrolling the streets, presumably giving traffic tickets but also looking for common criminals, as opposed to the security apparatus which was, of course, all pervasive in a totalitarian police state that used to be Iraq.
AMIN: Well, the police officers were basically manning the streets, taking care of traffic, taking care of theft, making sure there was no burglaries, and that they did a relatively an OK job. But they were very poorly paid. Most of them were not ruling Baath party members. They were not actually politicized. They didn't have a role in terms of controlling the political situation in Iraq. The other security forces, most of the members were either ruling Baath party members, or very close to the Saddam Hussein family, or his clan or his tribe or from Tikrit. That's where he comes from, the same town that was the Marines went into today. And those people were very well paid. They had high salaries. They were very influential, and they controlled people's lives in every single aspect.
Anybody who said any kind of -- who made any mention of Saddam Hussein in a critical way, even in a remote way could be persecuted. He could be arrested. There would be no trials, no lawyers. Families won't see them. And we did in the past few days encounter many people, families looking for loved ones, looking for other members of their families who have been taken from their homes by those security forces, and they just disappeared. They don't know what happened to them. They don't know if they're alive or dead. They don't know if they've been in prison for years and then died.
So, at one point, at one of the security buildings, at one of the intelligence buildings, people were actually digging the ground in that building, because they believe that maybe - maybe some of their family members who have been taken away by the security forces may have been imprisoned in these buildings. And they didn't find anything in the building. So they started digging the ground, thinking there may be -- there's more stuff (ph) over there. You can hear it.
BLITZER: All right, Rula, stand by for a minute. As we hear these shots, and these are obviously very disturbing. Let's listen in briefly and see if we hear some more.
You've been hearing an extensive barrage, an extensive barrage of gunfire coming out near the Palestine Hotel in the central part of Baghdad. For our viewers who may just be tuning in, we're showing you live pictures of Baghdad right now. There's been a firefight going on for a good half hour, a firefight involving what we estimate, according to our Rula Amin on the scene, perhaps five individuals. Perhaps paramilitaries, perhaps Fedayeen Saddam, perhaps simply terrorists. We don't know. U.S. Marines on the scene returning fire. Earlier, we also saw flares illuminate the skies over this area as the search for these fighters, these snipers, whatever we want to call them, continues. We don't know what happened in that latest barrage or that latest exchange of fire that we just heard live here on CNN. Rula Amin is at the Palestine Hotel, it's right near, only meters away, yards away from where this firefight has been going on. She's there with the Marines, she's on the roof overlooking this scene, this firefight that's been going on in the central part of Baghdad, just after 2 a.m. now in the Iraqi capital.
Rula, as you assess what's going on, as you can see, you probably have a better vantage of what's going on than we do. Tell us what's going on.
AMIN: I'll tell you, Wolf, this time the fire was incoming. It was obviously not the Marines shooting back, but this was incoming fire in the direction of the Marines and the hotel. And it's very close. According to the sergeant we just spoke to, he says those guys are just about 200 meters away from here, and they think it's about five guys in a building. For a while, we could only hear the outgoing fire from the Marines themselves. It seems now those guys are firing back again. And maybe they're trying actually to shut the lights off, because I just told you the Marines have just more lights on the roof, trying to light that area where they think those guys are. And maybe those guys are trying to fire in this direction to stop these lights and put it off -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula Amin, all right, I'm going to let you go. Be careful over there, Rula. And if you get some more information, obviously we'll bring you back. Rula Amin has been with us for the last several minutes, describing what's going on, this firefight not far from the Palestine Hotel in the central part of the Iraqi capital.
Our military correspondent, indeed our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre is monitoring this development as well. Jamie, as you look at these pictures, dramatic pictures of what's happening in Baghdad, urban warfare. This may not necessarily be classical urban warfare, but it's certainly a deadly form of urban warfare. What's going through your mind?
MCINTYRE: Well, it does have the salient feature of urban warfare, and that is the many, many places that enemy fighters can conceal themselves. That's what makes urban warfare so dangerous is the amount of places that someone can fire at you from. And it does appear that the Marines are taking fire, and also giving fire, in this exchange that's going on outside the Palestine Hotel in downtown Baghdad.
Of course, the Pentagon has said that Iraq remains a dangerous place, that Baghdad remains a dangerous place. In your interview today with General Tommy Franks, he pointed out that they still have what they call pockets of foreigners in Iraq, who in Franks' word have decided to fight until their last breath. We don't know who's responsible for these attacks on the Marines, but it does illustrate that difficulty that the U.S. military has in transitioning to some sort of a peacekeeping or stabilization role while they still have to be worried about taking fire. And of course, whenever you're in a city and trying to defend a target standing in one place, you become a much easier target.
While the Marines were moving through the city, staying mobile, keeping the opposition off balance, they're much safer. But once they start to settle in and the enemy knows where they are, they become much more vulnerable and have to worry a lot more about force protection. And this is exactly the kind of situation it's very difficult to defend against. If there's a lone sniper or several snipers, especially if they're willing to give their own lives in a suicide attack, it can be extremely difficult for the U.S. to defend against this.
Militarily, it's not significant. The capacity to inflict casualties is limited. But those casualties can still have a great psychological effect, and it can prevent, as I said, the transition of a role into a more peaceful role in the city of Baghdad. Of course, the big priority the United States would like to see now is some sort of return to normality in Baghdad, where people can begin to resume their daily lives, where commerce can resume, where schools can resume. And as long as there's a situation where people have to be worried about even walking out on the street in front of a main hotel, then clearly they haven't achieved that situation.
As for what's going on in this particular exchange of gunfire, of course, is impossible for us to tell from 6,000 miles away, except the obvious, that's self-evident from these pictures, which is that the Marines are being very cautious, they have taken fire, they have returned some fire, and they need to make sure that they neutralize this threat one way or the other before they can call it a night.
BLITZER: Jamie, I just want to recap for our viewers who may just be tuning in what we're seeing. We're looking at these live pictures of Baghdad. Baghdad, not secure by any means right now. Probably more secure than it was a day or so ago. But look at that flare that's now been fired over the skies of Baghdad. Clearly a U.S. military flare. They're looking for individuals that may be holed up in a building not far from the Palestine Hotel. That kind of flare lights up the sky, lights up the area, so they might be able to get a better sighting of who's firing at U.S. Marines and perhaps others. The flare goes up and then it goes down, and then they'll probably have to do it again to illuminate the area.
But there you saw that U.S. military flare go up over the skies of Baghdad. This is something the Marines, Jamie McIntyre, train for. I've been down to that urban warfare training center that they've set up in North Carolina at Camp Lejeune. I assume you've been there as well. The guys I assume, the U.S. Marines, the men and women who are in Baghdad right now, have been training precisely for this kind of operation. Is that a fair assessment?
MCINTYRE: Absolutely. This is called a MOUT, which is military operations in urban terrain. Of course, the most difficult operations are when you have to take an objective. And in the exercises that U.S. military personnel do in training, they typically sustain very high casualty rates in trying to fight in an urban environment. It's considered often success if you can keep your casualty rate under 30 or 20 or 30 percent. But that's when you have to, say, storm an objective and go room to room, house to house, fighting a very determined foe. They practice for it all the time.
This is a little bit different situation. Not quite as dangerous. But still potentially dangerous. And that is they're in what appears to be a situation where they're trying to defend against a sniper. That way, they're able to take cover. They're also able to take advantage of some of the high-tech technology that the United States has in counter-sniper warfare. They can use night vision goggles and other equipment to sometimes detect where the muzzle flash might be coming from, if it's coming from a building. They can also sometimes use overhead imagery from Predators. They could even call in, if they wanted to, call in an air strike. There are still combat air patrols over Baghdad with precision-guided bombs. If they, for instance, decided that the threat was coming from a particular building, they could radio those coordinates up to an aircraft and drop a satellite-guided, precision-guided bomb directly on the location where they thought they were taking fire from.
So they have a lot of options, but they also need to be mindful that they're in an urban environment, they're trying to minimize civilian casualties. And so they need to factor all those things in, and that's where the training comes in in this kind of a situation. Not to act precipitously, but to be able to act methodically, to neutralize the threat with a minimum threat of damage and -- to unintended civilian casualties, and so-called collateral damage -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jamie, we saw that flare go up. We've seen now several flares go up over Baghdad in the past half hour, 40 minutes or so as we've been monitoring this firefight live here on CNN, not far from the Palestine Hotel. We've heard Rula Amin get word from one U.S. Marine on the scene, they suspect perhaps five fighters, some sort of fighters, perhaps paramilitary forces, perhaps Fedayeen Saddam, perhaps some of these pockets of foreigners, as you correctly point out, that General Tommy Franks described earlier in the day in that interview I had with him here in Doha, Qatar at the Central Command headquarters.
When I asked him about those pockets of foreigners, I said, who are these foreigners? And immediately out of his mouth was, Syrians. We've heard lately, Jamie, as you well know, a lot of discussion from top Bush administration officials, the president, the secretary of defense, and others now, the commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a lot of talk about the Syrians and what they may or may not be doing. When we hear about Syrians who may be in Baghdad, who may be fighting, perhaps holding out, that doesn't necessarily mean, Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong, that these are representatives of the Syrian government. They may be mercenaries who thought that they would serve the so- called cause, or were getting paid by Saddam Hussein. Is that what you're hearing as well?
MCINTYRE: In fact, I think that's the prime suspicion. Not necessarily this was state-sponsored activity, but part of the foreign fighters that Iraq had recruited to serve as sometimes stiffeners for some of the regular forces. People who were being paid to fight. Although the U.S. has left open the question of the extent that Syria might have been, quote, "helpful" in Iraq, both in supplying military equipment and supplying people and expertise, and in also possibly providing one of the few places where Iraqi officials could flee for safe haven.
Now it's unclear how many senior Iraqi officials may have made their way into Syria. But the Pentagon believes at least some number have done that. I haven't heard of any big names that they're looking for that are definitely in Syria. But Syria is one of the few places where they can go and expect to get some sort of asylum. So the U.S. is very concerned about Syria's involvement, and to the extent that it's helping out Iraq. And again, these foreign fighters are something they've been very careful to say that they're not sure exactly where they're all from. They are not sure exactly what they're all about. They do however seem to be some of the forces that are willing to fight until the end, so-called dead-enders identified by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. So we don't know if that's what we're dealing with here, or if there's some other faction involved in this fighting.
BLITZER: Jamie, please stand by. Rula Amin is on the scene for us. She is on the roof of the Palestine Hotel. That's only a few meters away from where this firefight is going on. We saw the flares illuminate the area several times, U.S. military flares. Rula, within the past few minutes Lebanese television has reported that one U.S. servicemen, we don't know from what branch, Army or Marine Corps, has been injured in this firefight that we've been watching now on CNN live for the last half hour, 40 minutes, or so. Have you collected any additional information on what may be going on?
AMIN: Well, we have heard this report. We're trying to confirm it. I just spoke to one of the sergeants here, the U.S. Marine sergeants, just about 15 minutes ago, and he told me that the Marines think there are about five people armed with AKs, and that they were firing at the Marines. They believe that they are all hiding in one building, just about 200 meters away from where I'm standing on the roof of the Palestine Hotel. And so he didn't seem to be panicking. It seems that they were thinking that things are under control.
In the beginning of the firefight, they asked everybody to turn the lights off. Many reporters are on this roof, trying to do live shots to record the story. And they were all asked to turn their lights off. Then the Marines came and they put more lights in the direction of that building they believe those people are staying at. Then we saw more flares going in a different direction. And then more fire coming into the direction of the Marines and the hotel. So it seems maybe the Marines are suspecting now that there's more fire coming from another direction, but for the last 10 minutes, it's been quiet. However, we do still see Marines moving around the circle outside the Palestine Hotel -- Wolf.
BLITZER: And Rula, we heard from Jamie McIntyre reporting, quoting the commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom, General Franks in that interview I had with him earlier today, speaking about the dangers that still exist, very real dangers, inside Baghdad. He referred to what he called "pockets of foreigners," and then he specifically mentioned perhaps Syrians. Syrian mercenaries who have come in. Jamie was speaking about others, other non-Iraqis, other Arab fighters, Muslim fighters, who might still believe that they're going to fight until the end, fight the U.S., even though the Republican Guard, the Elite Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, has crumbled, basically. The regular Iraqi military has basically gone away, has given up. There's no sign of the Iraqi leadership, the Baath leadership. No sign of Saddam Hussein. But there are these other so-called foreigners who appear ready to fight and die until the bitter end. What can you tell us about these foreigners? Are they mercenaries? Were they expecting to get paid? Or are they simply what we would call in the United States, true believers, believing that they're serving the great cause?
AMIN: Well, Wolf, here they call them the Arab volunteers, because these -- you can hear some shots over there.
So they call them here the Arab volunteers, because those people came from different parts of the Arab world, from Syria, from Lebanon, from Jordan, from Libya, from Tunisia, and many came from Saudi Arabia. They believe that the U.S. invasion to Iraq was an invasion of an Arab country, a Muslim country, that this was an occupation, not a help to the Iraqi people. And they thought it was their duty to help defend Iraq, along with the Iraqis.
However, when the Iraqis decided to stop fighting and they gave up the fight, those people didn't. Some of them didn't even know that the battle was over. Because they didn't have any radios, there's no power, they don't have their families here so there's no way for them to actually know what was happening.
At the same time, many of them had said that they didn't come here to defend Saddam Hussein, but to defend Iraq. So the fact that Saddam Hussein had given up on the fighting doesn't seem to deter them from continuing what they consider as a legitimate fight. They see this as a threat not only to Iraq, but to the whole Arab countries. And so they feel that they're fulfilling a duty.
Some of them are religious, and they come here with very religious motives and feelings, that they're fulfilling a religious duty. But others are not. And again, the surprising thing is that there were many Saudis among them. People who thought that this U.S. move into Iraq is a threat to the region and a threat to Islam, and they came here to help. And the Saudi element is significant, more even than Syrian, because the Syrians are more...
BLITZER: All right, Rula, stand by for a minute. Let me explain to our viewers the gunshots, the firefight that we're hearing live, we're watching live here on CNN. You can see a United States Marine obviously taking aim, firing into a building from which there's fire coming at them. We heard from one Marine sergeant on the scene with our Rula Amin, at the Palestine Hotel, estimating that perhaps five, perhaps more individuals, we don't know who they are, are sniping, they are firing at U.S. troops in the area of the Palestine Hotel, which is of course the hotel that's housing most of the foreign press. Hundreds of reporters understandably have gathered in Baghdad, despite the dangers. They want to be where the story is. They thought -- I think many of them, including our own team of CNN correspondents, it was relatively safe, relatively safe around the Palestine Hotel, inside the Palestine Hotel, because that's where the U.S. Marines effectively set up shop as well, with a heavy, very visible U.S. Marine presence. It was believed to be relatively safe.
But now with only a few meters away from this hotel, we're hearing these exchanges, these volleys going on. We don't know precisely what's going on, but we do know that there have been flares that have illuminated the area around the firefight, over the past 45 minutes so. The U.S. Marines looking for the source of those snipers inside some building. Do you have any idea, Rula, where this -- what may be the building from which these snipers may be targeting U.S. Marines, perhaps others?
AMIN: Yes, we are told by the sergeant that they are in a building -- it's a small building, it's like a gas station, just behind the mosque. I'm not sure that you can see the mosque now. But if you remember, there's a circle just outside the hotel, a famous circle with a mosque with a blue dome. And that's exactly where the Iraqis went and with the help of the Marines, brought down the statue of Saddam Hussein.
The Marines are exactly at that circle. And behind the mosque, there is a gas station with a small building next to it, adjacent to it, part of the gas station. And the Marines think there is where those people are shooting at them from.
We are next to those buildings. There's an Al-Luia (ph) club, this is an upscale club in Baghdad. It's deserted now. Probably there's only a couple of guards there. There's also a very famous chicken place. But the Marines say they believe the guys are at the gas station, not at the chicken place -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, within the past few minutes, the Al-Arabiya, the Arabic language television network, has reported that three or four individuals described as the fighters who may have been at that location, dressed in civilian clothes, have now surrendered to the U.S. Marines. We don't know more than that. We know that Al-Arabiya is reporting that right now. Based on your experience, Rula, which is expensive obviously in the Middle East, how reliable would a report like that from Al-Arabiya be?
AMIN: Well, I think, Wolf, it's a matter of where is their position. How much can they see from the roof spot? Because it's a huge roof here at the Palestine Hotel. This is not a matter of the credibility of Al-Arabiya, but the credibility of their position. So if they're in a better position than we are, then they can see more.
However, even if they had seen people actually turning themselves in, it doesn't mean that those are the people who are actually doing the firing. Because just about half an hour ago, there was another guy who had -- we were told had been arrested. But I think the way the eyewitnesses described it for me, they said that he came out, one of the Marines shouted "don't shoot," calling on his colleague not to shoot, then he went out to one building, and brought this guy, he was holding his arm, the arm of this man to the back. And this may be a guard. Because he didn't have a gun. This may be just a guard in one of the buildings who got afraid and decided to tell the Marines that he was there because he wanted to save his life.
So we're not sure that even if Al-Arabiya crew had seen those four guys coming out that they are the guys who are doing the shooting, because we're still hearing the firing from the Marines and from the other side. So if those people have given themselves up, who's shooting? --Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, we saw another flare just go up within the past few seconds, to try to show some -- illuminate some light. We see people moving now on the streets. Stand by, Rula, for a moment, collect your thoughts if you got some more information, we'll of course get that on the air right away.
I want to set the scene once again for viewers who may just be tuning into CNN at this point. Now for nearly an hour, we've been covering this firefight on the streets of Baghdad, right near the Palestine Hotel, the hotel where the Marines are based, effectively, in this one section of central Baghdad. It also happens to be the hotel where hundreds of foreign reporters have converged to do their reporting from, including CNN's own staff of reporters, producers, photographers and others.
And within the past 45 minutes to an hour, we've heard extensive gunfire coming from a location near the hotel. We've seen a lot of flares go up to try to illuminate the area. We've seen Marines return fire, and we've seen of course the fire coming from this building.
General David Grange, retired, U.S. Army is joining us now. General, this sounds like a serious kind of firefight with potential, if there are snipers aiming at U.S. Marines from a location that they may be fairly secure at. We haven't heard any shots in the last few minutes. But we do see somebody in custody right now, General. As you can see, somebody being moved across the street. But we don't know if this is someone who was firing at the Marines. It may be somebody else. But we see this individual being taken into custody as we continue to monitor these events. How dangerous of a situation, as we've seen it, is this, General, for the U.S. Marines who are in and around the Palestine Hotel?
GEN. DAVID GRANGE, U.S. ARMY (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, this is one of those acts that was anticipated. In fact, I think many said that there would be more of these type of firefights, sniping, RPG, mortar round type engagements against the coalition forces. One thing that may be considered is that because of the correspondents in this particular hotel, that is one reason that the coalition forces were targeted at that location. Because of the information, the media will get out of that engagement, to show, hey, this place isn't secure, there's still some hostile people out there. And they won't know I don't think for some time who actually, or the extent of the enemy forces in this particular engagement.
BLITZER: What's the purpose, General? You're familiar with the flares that go up. They try to illuminate the area. It's now approaching 2:30 a.m. Baghdad time. No electricity, basically, in most of the city. It's very dark. So they fire up a flare to see if they can better determine who's shooting at them, where the fire is coming from? Is that it?
GRANGE: Well, the flares, normally -- for instance, the coalition forces have quite advanced night vision devices to use at night. But that usually helps you in an attack. If you're on defense, you can use any kind of artificial light, it would give you a greater advantage. So why use the night vision devices if you can use artificial light? And so that's the purpose. To fire the flares, to identify civilians or to identify people rapidly who have a weapon, who doesn't. And that's probably the criteria for shooting someone. Do they have a weapon or not? Because there's people dressed as civilians in this particular fight. So that's kind of the only way to tell friend or foe.
BLITZER: If they're dressed as civilians in civilian clothes, they're not wearing a uniform, that makes it more difficult, because then you don't know for sure if you're just firing at a random civilian, an innocent civilian, or someone who may be the enemy.
GRANGE: No, they'll only fire at someone who's a threat, in other words someone that actually has a weapon. That's one purpose of the flares. Or some other type of hostile act towards the Marine perimeter. So that's what's determining whether they engage or not.
BLITZER: We had heard a lot of speculation, General Grange, about these foreigners, these foreign fighters who have converged on Iraq in recent weeks, months, indeed years, some of them mercenaries, some of them true believers, if you will. Some of them what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called "dead-enders." They're ready to die there on the scene for what they believe is a just cause. They potentially are a lot more serious threat than the regular Iraqi army or even the Republican Guard, because all of those guys have basically crumbled and have given up.
GRANGE: I think you're right there. Definitely harder than the Republican Guard. If you recall from Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, a lot of foreign fighters involved there, to include Chechens, the Sudanese, Yemenis, et cetera. And the same thing is happening here in Iraq. They are probably integrated with the Fedayeen. But definitely not the regular army or the Republican Guard.
BLITZER: The Fedayeen Saddam or the paramilitary groups that we heard so much about. What was their track record in this war? Did they fight or did they give up as well?
GRANGE: Well, the Fedayeen were the ones that, you know, the catalyst behind forcing the regular Iraqi military, and probably even some of the Republican Guard units, their smaller elements, to fight with fear or threat of death if they did not. And so they're the hard-core fanatics. Most of these people are recruited, Wolf, because they're thugs, they are just criminals. And I remember this from the Balkans, they used to let people out of prison to join the ranks of some of these special police paramilitary units. And so that's the kind of people that you're dealing with here. They wear civilian clothes, they blend into the neighborhoods, they're bad characters, they're thugs. And the only way to identify them in many cases is through the civilian populace that turns them in.
BLITZER: We haven't heard any shots fired, I don't believe, in the last few minutes. We did see the Marines take some individuals off the streets. But yet another flare has just been fired to try to put some light on the scene. So presumably, General Grange, this firefight that's been going on now for about an hour, this firefight is not over if they're still firing flares over the sky, unless you tell me that it's just a post-firefight standard operating procedure. You fire a flare just to double and triple check that there's nobody else there. What do you make of it?
GRANGE: I think the flares, Wolf, will be fired on call from one of the ground commanders on the perimeter. They'll continue to call in mortar flares to light up the area as they determine there may be a threat or suspected movement in certain areas.
This will probably continue through daylight. And then you're going to have a phase where now they've checked the immediate area of the hotel, but they're going to have to send in patrols out to try to find where these little sniper cells are located. And they may slip away by daylight. So this is a challenging situation. And in fact, it's leveling the playing field for the paramilitary against the coalition forces.
BLITZER: We did see that dramatic video just a few minutes ago of that one individual, bare-chested, being forced to run through the street in the custody of U.S. troops, clearly someone suspicious, someone who's generated some concern, and he's now apprehended. This picture is something that just occurred within the past few minutes. We've been watching all of this unfold live here on CNN.
The reason we can see this is because it's near the Palestine Hotel, plenty of cameras around the Palestine Hotel. They're monitoring this situation. They're watching it, although they've asked the U.S. Marines who are in charge effectively of the area in and around the Palestine Hotel, they've asked us to turn off our lights. We can't see our reporters up on the roof there but we can see, we can see what's happening in and around the hotel.
We do see U.S. Marines still in clearly a combat ready position, squatting down with their guns pointed. They're looking - they're looking to see if they can determine where the shots being fired at them are coming from.
Jamie McIntyre, as you look at these dramatic pictures, the U.S. Marines trained for this kind of operation as you and I have discussed, but training is one thing. Real life activity is obviously another.
MCINTYRE: That's right, Wolf, and this is where all the training kicks in. I mean one of the reasons they go through such extensive training is that when they're in a situation where they're facing urban combat, they don't have to think as much about what it is they need to do.
They have essentially a mental checklist of things to do to not only neutralize the threat but to keep - to stay safe, to minimize the chance that they're going to take any casualties, meanwhile put force against the enemy forces in order to either flesh them out or to capture or kill them.
And, again, this is always the most difficult situation, taking out a sniper or snipers, particularly if they're well concealed and you can't tell exactly where the fire is coming from, for instance if a sniper is moving from window to window or even from building to building and is using a weapon that can be concealed, it can be very, very tough to know when something like this is over. Essentially you know it's over when they're not firing at you anymore unless you're able to identify the target and take it out yourself.
And they also want to avoid overkill, that is to say they could easily call in, for instance, air strikes to use very powerful bombs to neutralize a target, but that runs a lot of risk of civilian casualties and also it also just runs the risk to them as well, because any time you bring in a lot of airpower on a target that can pose a threat to your forces on the ground as well, the friendly forces.
But what we're seeing here, as near as we can tell from our vantage point 6,000 miles away, they're basically running this operation by the book. They're being very methodical about it. You've seen them use flares a couple of times to illuminate the area, to give them a better look at some aspects of it. They'll do that from time to time. Other times they'll rely on night vision equipment that can pick up just even very, very faint amounts of light that help them see things moving in the darkness.
So, that's one of the reasons why they ask the reporters in the hotel not to use any lights because the night vision equipment is actually much more effective in an almost no light environment. It gives the U.S. an advantage. But again, we're just going to have to watch this play out. There's no way for us to tell from here exactly what's going on. It's not even clear the Marines themselves on the ground have a total picture of what it is they're up against and the adversary they're dealing with - Wolf.
BLITZER: Jamie, stand by please, Jamie McIntyre our senior Pentagon correspondent. We're also talking with General David Grange, our CNN military analyst, retired U.S. Army.
Rula Amin is our reporter. She's there. She's on the scene. She's only a few yards away from what's going on. She's on top of the roof at the Palestine Hotel. How many stories are there at that hotel, Rula? How high are you?
AMIN: Well, we're not actually high because we're not at the top floor of the hotel. The hotel, the highest floor there is 17 floors, but we're about only three floors up and this is kind of a secondary roof that all of the journalists, the foreign press that are here in Baghdad, they all have different live locations. It's a large area. That's why we all have different views of that circle just outside the gates of the Palestine Hotel. It's the same circle you saw, as I said before, where that Saddam Hussein statue was brought down with the help of the Marines and some Iraqi residents.
So, in that square we can see some Marines, soldiers, walking around, moving around. We don't see anybody running or anything, but the firefight, the shots we can still hear some of them. There are between once in a while still flares. The Marines told us they believe there are about five people with guns inside one of the buildings just behind the mosque.
I'm not sure you can see that mosque, but in that circle there is a mosque, and behind it there is a gas station. They believe there is a gas station over there and that those people are hiding in a building in that gas station. That's what the Marines' estimate is but still I think they are still trying to get a better picture because they are sending flares in different directions, not only in that direction.
And as I told you, Wolf, before we are not here. We can not be on camera because earlier we were told to put all our lights off on the roof. And then later on, the Marines came and they used some of the lights, big lights, from the roof, directed towards that building where they believe the guys are there with the guns.
This is only about 200 meters away from the Palestine Hotel or actually from where we're standing right here. Most of the reporters on the roof now have their flack jackets on and all the lights are turned off except those directed toward that building - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, I hope you have your flack jacket on as well, and if you have a helmet put it on also.
I want to bring in General Grange back. General, is this - Jamie McIntyre says it looks like it's being conducted according to standard operating procedure, according to the book, the flares, the return gunfire.
If there is a gas station near that mosque and we've all seen that mosque on CNN behind our reporters during daylight hours as they do their live shots from the Palestine Hotel, I assume it's that same mosque, why is it so difficult for the Marines which have a huge presence, significant, robust presence with tanks, armored personnel carriers, sophisticated equipment, night vision equipment, the flares, not to simply take out that gas station and find out what's going on?
GRANGE: Well, one - a couple points here. One is that there may be a patrol, a coalition patrol heading to that location right now. We just don't see it on broadcast. I mean they have probably counter sniper patrols going out right now.
Number two, the best counter sniper weapon is another sniper, and so one thing you can be sure of that there's some snipers and, again, we may not be able to see them. There are snipers waiting to take a shot at the next time an enemy sniper shows themselves, either from the muzzle flash or the individual moving back inside of a window, whatever the case may be.
And, it may not just be a sniper rifle shot to take out a sniper. It could be any direct fire weapon and this is a little controversy, but to include a tank because keep in mind a tank round is nothing but a big dart. There's different types of munitions for the Abrams tank but in most cases most of these rounds it's like almost like a giant bullet. It's just a rod, a steel rod.
And, the other point again I think it's important to realize about this is that the Palestine Hotel is not only a headquarters for coalition but it's also where the - whoever the enemy sniper group is they know that there's a lot of media in the vicinity and their actions will be captured on film.
BLITZER: Jamie McIntyre, our Pentagon correspondent, is watching all of this for us as well. I assume, Jamie, and maybe you have an answer to this, maybe you don't.
I assume the Marines set up shop in that Palestine Hotel in the lobby there precisely because that's where the foreign press, including the American press corps, had been based and established and they wanted to make sure that the international press corps was protected. It was also a good location for them to operate. But what, if anything, do you know about why they picked the Palestine Hotel to serve as a sort of base, at least in this one central part of Baghdad?
MCINTYRE: Well, I haven't heard anything official, Wolf, but it is a logical base of operations because, as you point out, it serves that dual purpose. One is it is a good place to operate from. It was during the war supposed to be a "no-strike target." It was supposed - it was not on the bombing list. It was not supposed to be attacked.
Now, you know there's a bit of a controversy about a tank round that apparently hit the building from a U.S. tank and whether or not the crew knew that that was supposed to be a no-strike target or whether they felt they needed to respond anyway to fire that was happening at that time.
But, again, so the idea was that that was never supposed to be a target that was supposed to be destroyed in any way so it would have been a logical base of operations, some place that would have still been in operating condition.
Also, it was being used to some extent by the Iraqis. The Iraqi information minister and others were often at the hotel, so it's a logical place for the U.S. to take control over and, in fact, it was the place where international news media were based and so they could essentially interact with them and protect them at the same time.
The U.S. has never assumed responsibility for the security of news reporters, nor do reporters, I think, expect that but it is mutually beneficial when there can be security and reporters can do their job and the U.S. doesn't have to worry about the very negative public relations that happens when a reporter is caught in the crossfire. So, for that reason it was a very logical place to set up shop.
BLITZER: All right, Jamie, please stand by.
General Grange, if you can see CNN right now on a monitor in front of you, you see this movement down the street. It looks like an armored personnel carrier. What does it say to you? What can you help our viewers better appreciate from the sights that they're seeing on their screen?
GRANGE: Well, what you have is a combat patrol. It looks like it's coming back from a patrol. In other words, they went somewhere to check out an area. Now they're returning to maybe the perimeter. It looked like they used the armored personnel carrier, the Amtrak (ph), to provide cover from sniper fire because that size round would not penetrate the armored personnel carrier and most of the area, you know, most of the vehicle's area of coverage.
It would not penetrate it, so they use that for protection, but it looks like they're coming back from one of those patrols I mentioned to you, mentioned that they're probably doing, and you're going to see much - probably there's a lot more of these that we don't see, but you can see the vehicle there providing protection for that particular squad, that patrol.
BLITZER: One final question, General Grange, before I let you go because I'm still a little confused. When do the Marines want to use the flares to illuminate the areas and when are they better off using night vision goggles which work better when it's very, very dark or when do you have a combination of both?
GRANGE: OK. Once firing starts or artificial light is established, whether it be a flare or headlights or like the light poles you're looking at right now, it kind of it flashes out. It blinds you under the night vision goggles. In other words, you get a short period of time where it just phases it out. It's like a flash - almost like a flash bulb type effect it has on the goggles.
The other is that night vision goggles are good when you're attacking, when you're, what do they call it meeting engagements or bumping into enemy forces at night. You're on patrol. You're on a raid. Like, for instance, when they went in to get Jessica, the POW, that type of thing. They're excellent for something like that.
But if you're in a perimeter around a big hotel and you're getting fire from many different locations, to put out artificial light doesn't really hurt you as long as you can put the flare behind, behind the suspected enemy location. That silhouettes the enemy to you, so you want to put the mortar flare behind the enemy position.
Now, the problem in a built-up area like a city, the buildings negate a lot of the effect of the flares but they're probably covering streets with those flares as well as the lights you see on the poles that are just kind of facing out to the perimeter. So, in this case, it's advantageous to have the artificial light. BLITZER: General David Grange, thanks very much. We'll be talking with you in a little while. General David Grange, our CNN military analyst.
Rula Amin is with us. She's on the scene, and for viewers who may just be tuning in, for more than an hour now we've been watching a firefight unfold, live here on CNN, on the streets of Baghdad not far from the Palestine Hotel, the hotel where the U.S. Marines are based in the central part of the Iraqi capital, also of course the point of operations for hundreds of foreign reporters who have converged on Baghdad, including our own reporters from CNN, one of them being Rula Amin.
Rula, I know that you can help us understand a little bit better why the Marines picked the Palestine Hotel to set up shop.
AMIN: Well, Wolf, what happened is that when the journalists were in Baghdad in the month before the war, they were staying at the Rasheed Hotel and they were operating and functioning out of the Iraqi information ministry.
Then, the U.S. told them that these two sites, these two locations might be hit by coalition forces because they may suspect that they're Iraqi command and control centers and journalists were advised to leave these two locations.
So, many journalists left the Rasheed Hotel and they went to different hotels in town; however, the Iraqi information ministry did not allow the journalists to move their satellite dishes and their equipment to anywhere except for the Palestine Hotel.
So, de facto most of the journalists ended up shifting and moving their locations from the Iraqi information ministry to the Palestine Hotel, and then we saw this incident where there was a tank shell that was fired by the Marines into the hotel where two journalists were killed and that caused a lot of anger and a lot of concern among many against - many accused the Marines of doing it deliberately or recklessly.
However, following that incident it became as if the Palestine Hotel became secured from such attack because everybody rose hell when that thing happened, and when the Marines came in town they were first on the western side of the Tigris and then when they crossed to the eastern side they came to this square and they came here, so many tanks from every direction.
And then we had that scene where the people were bringing down the statue of Saddam Hussein and I think, I am not sure why the Marines picked it, but it may be just a de facto that the journalists were here. The Marines came to the square. There are two hotels here. This is called the Palestine Regent (ph) Hotel and next to it is the Sheraton Hotel.
So, many journalists are staying here. There is enough room for the journalists and the Marines. Actually, many rooms are occupied by three or four people now because there's over occupancy but it may be that the fact that the journalists stayed here because they thought that this would be a safe place now that the Marines know it very well following that shooting incident and they're not going to do it again.
The Iraqis didn't mind the journalists staying here. The Marines came to where all the journalists were in Baghdad and that's where the journalists actually broadcast the live pictures of the fall of Baghdad and the fall of the Iraqi regime. So, this may be a de facto thing resulting from the first time that the Iraqi information ministry said that journalists are only allowed to operate outside the ministry at the Palestine and that was the only place - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, please stand by for a minute. I want to recap once again for our viewers.
They call it small arms fire but it's been extensive. It certainly can be very deadly. It's been unfolding for more than an hour now near the Palestine Hotel in downtown Baghdad. That's the hotel where the foreign press are based. It's also the hotel where there are a lot of U.S. Marines based in Baghdad, right at the center of the town where that square, where they took Saddam Hussein's statue the other day and dramatically ripped it off and a lot of our viewers, of course, watched that live on CNN as well.
Jamie McIntyre is our Pentagon Correspondent, our Senior Pentagon Correspondent. He's watching all of this. Jamie, I want to play some videotape that we got live here on CNN just a little while ago of an individual clearly apprehended by U.S. Marines. Narrate what you see on the screen. Give our viewers a sense, perspective of what this may be.
MCINTYRE: Well, I have to say it's very difficult for me to say from this far away. I mean I'm only seeing the same pictures that you're seeing but we see they're taking somebody into custody and they've probably secured him using those plastic handcuffs. They're very popular now to use those instead of metal handcuffs. Apparently he's been disarmed and being taken away and, you know, that's basically all you can say.
I would say, though, one thing we should keep in mind is that this is a situation where the television can be a little bit - give a little bit of a distorted picture about what's going on. I mean not to minimize what's happening in Baghdad, which is clearly a dangerous situation for the Marines involved there.
But at the same time according to all the sources of information we have, there's a lot of robust military activity taking place in Tikrit where we do not have cameras, and while we're focused on this relatively minor incident, although again not to minimize the danger that's happening in downtown Baghdad because we can see it and we can watch it live.
What we're not able to show you is what's going on in what may be the last battleground of this Gulf War and that is U.S. Marines advancing on Tikrit tonight with heavy armor, helicopter gun ships, and also close air support there. So, there is likely a fairly robust and major battle going underway even if they're not meeting too much resistance in Tikrit which the U.S. military doesn't expect to meet. Nevertheless, we can see even in a city like Baghdad, which has essentially been conquered, there is still resistance, still danger to U.S. troops.
All of this to say that what Tommy Franks said is that he is not close to declaring an end to the combat operations phase of what's going on in Iraq. There are also a great number of places in Iraq where there have been no U.S. troops yet, large portions of the country that aren't highly populated but areas where the U.S. has yet to go into. So, it may be not just days but clearly weeks before the United States is able to say that peace of some kind has come to Iraq - Wolf.
BLITZER: Jamie, we just got some videotape from Al-Jazeera, the Arabic language satellite channel of three individuals apparently who have now, additional three individuals who have been taken into custody surrounding this event, in connection with this event. You can see them now being removed. When you look at these pictures, Jamie, what do you see? They've obviously been pinned down on the ground and they're being apprehended pretty severely - Jamie.
MCINTYRE: Well, obviously these are suspects if they don't know for sure that these are people who were threatening U.S. forces, then those were clearly people that they suspected of doing that.
You know, again, from this distance away there's no way for us to be able to tell precisely what level of information they had or whether they were able to witness these people threatening U.S. troops or firing on U.S. troops or whether these were people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but clearly enough of a threat perceived by the U.S. Marines that they have detained those people and taken them into custody.
BLITZER: Now, we're getting similar pictures from the other Arabic language satellite channel Al-Arabiya. That first picture, I don't know if we can show that to our viewers again, of that individual clearly apprehended, bare-chested, being removed by U.S. authorities, Marines we believe, apprehended.
When I saw that individual, Jamie and Rula, I wanted to bring you in on this as well, Rula Amin is on the scene, the first thing that went through my mind when I saw this individual not wearing a shirt is what the Israelis often do when they apprehend someone they suspect could be a suicide bomber. They make them take off their clothes, if you will, to make sure there's no bombs being hidden in a vest or anything of that nature.
Jamie, first to you, is that the impression that's possible in this case, given the sensitivity of suicide bombers? You apprehend somebody. The first thing you do before you even get close to him is you make him take off his shirt.
MCINTYRE: Well, that's a very real danger, Wolf. They have had some suicide bombers. We have seen instances where Iraqi citizens have been forced to, if not take off their clothes, at least lift their shirt or demonstrate in some other way that they don't have concealed weapons or bombs before the U.S. troops get close to them.
That very well may be what was happening there. We just don't know. We do know it's a very real threat. Suicide bombers including discovery of specially constructed vests and steel balls in them with remote-controlled detonators that the U.S. military found in a school.
It does seem from watching it again from this distance that some of the - maybe Rula Amin can fill us in on this, that some of the shooting has died down. It does appear now that they've taken some people into custody and this incident may be wrapping up, but I would defer to our reporter on the scene who might have a closer, a better idea of what's exactly going on.
AMIN: Wolf, it should be (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
BLITZER: Well, that's a good idea, Jamie. Let's bring back Rula Amin. You're right there. Rula, go ahead. Sorry for interrupting but go ahead and maybe you get a sense. Has this incident died down or is it still underway?
AMIN: It seems that it is dying down because we're seeing less Marines in the square, in the circle just outside the hotel, and I was just watching the Marines inside the vicinity of the hotel. They seem pretty relaxed. They were just walking around individually. They didn't seem to be on high alert.
But, again, referring to that guy without, with his - without a shirt on, that is significant, Wolf, and probably that is a move by the Marines in order to make sure that these guys are not suicide bombers. There is a cause for - there is a real cause for alarm here among the Marines especially that we do know that in the past few days they found at one school about 50 professionally manufactured vests.
Those vests are very similar to the photographers' vests. They were filled with explosives and there was a detonation button that one can use in order to detonate those explosives, and what caused the alarm is not only that these were professionally made but the fact that there were 100 hangars and they were only able to find about 30 to 40 vests. That means that there's about 50 vests that are out there somewhere with some people and they may be still determined to use them.
So, that is why the Marines are very much suspicious when they arrest anybody or when they have suspects that they think they may still be determined to inflict damage among the troops. We have seen suicide bombing attempts. We do know that the Iraqis have spoken about this.
I remember Saeed al-Sahaf, the Information Minister, he was once asked about this. The way the question was posed for him he was told that you are accused of using the suicide bombing techniques and you may resort to it, and he said, you know, that we haven't even started yet, and they were very proud of the fact that they will use it. So, and especially that we know that there are at least Arab volunteers, maybe some of them have been part of the Mujahadeen. We don't know but it is a very significant scene and probably that is the reason behind it, the suspicion that there may be some suicide bombers trying to inflict damage among the Marines - Wolf.
BLITZER: All right, Rula, I think you're making some excellent points for our viewers, high sensitivity that there could be suicide bombers out there. The first order of business if you suspect someone might have some explosives under their shirt in a vest or whatever you make him take it off, perhaps, and we're just speculating, perhaps that's why we saw that one individual apprehended by U.S. Marines walking without a shirt.
I know from my experience reporting from Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, that's what the Israelis often do when they suspect someone may have one of those suicide bomb vests or outfits underneath clothes. They make everyone take off their shirt to make sure that there are no such vests.
And, as General Tommy Franks told me today when I interviewed him, there have been several hundred of these vests that have been found by U.S. troops, vests including explosives, ball bearings to make those explosives even more deadly, if in fact the suicide bomber goes ahead.
We're getting some more tape now from Al-Arabiya, which is one of the Arab language satellite channels showing some arrest. Jamie McIntyre, one of the suggestions from Al-Arabiya is that these individuals may actually have been arrested inside, repeat inside the Palestine Hotel, which would raise a lot of alarm bells, not only for the Marines who are inside that hotel but also among the journalists who are inside that hotel.
Jamie, tell us what you're seeing in these pictures and what they say to you.
MCINTYRE: Well, again, it's - I'm at the disadvantage of watching this from so far away. All we can see is that they clearly believe that these three individuals were posing a threat in some way to U.S. forces.
They have been handcuffed with the plastic handcuffs that are used by the U.S. military. They can carry those around in great numbers and they're very effective for binding hands behind them and they are holding them at gunpoint, and aside from that there's really no way for me without going into the area of wild speculation to ascertain what is actually going on there.
BLITZER: We don't want you to go into the area of wild speculation. I will bring back Rula Amin, our reporter. She's there at the scene at the Palestine Hotel looking over this incident.
Rula, it's been underway for about an hour and a half. Do you definitely get the distinct impression that it's over with? We haven't heard any gunfire now in I'm guessing at least 20 minutes or so and we haven't seen any flares in the past 20 minutes or so. Are you getting any additional information from troops on the ground?
AMIN: No. The troops on the ground are not talking yet; however, as you said, the firefight, the shooting has died down. The soldiers, the Marines we can see here from the top of the roof are - they seem pretty relaxed. They were just going around their business as if the whole thing is over. But from where I'm standing we can not see the whole circle.
It's a huge roof here at the Palestine Hotel and most of the journalists are standing at different points, so what I'm seeing is different from what Al-Arabiya people are seeing, is different from what Al-Jazeera Arab satellite channel are seeing, so I think we're all putting all our information together and trying to put the picture on what has happened and if this incident is done.
Again, this incident seems now very significant because this is so close to the Palestine Hotel, the base for the Marines and the journalists, but we do know that throughout the day in Baghdad there are these sporadic fights and the Marines don't seem to make too much out of them because they think they are not organized and there is - they're not very dangerous in terms that they think they can overcome them because it's mostly individuals.
Some of them are not Iraqis and they don't know the street very well and they are - so, it's easier to arrest them or trying to silence their fire and that's why we think that the Marines we see here at the hotel seem to be relaxed and they seem to think that their control over Baghdad is relatively firm and that it's only going in the direction they desire - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula, as far as you know, this kind of firefight that we've reported on now for the past hour, hour and a half here on CNN, dramatic pictures, arrests, flares, a lot of volleys of gunfire, very, very loud that we've heard here on CNN. These, I assume, are going on throughout Baghdad, although we don't necessarily have cameras and reporters recording what's going on. Is that your sense, that these are relatively common, these exchanges, these firefights throughout the Iraqi capital, which is a huge city of some 5 million people?
AMIN: I wouldn't use common, but I wouldn't say irregular. They are sporadic. Sometimes there is two or three hours between one firefight and another, in different neighborhoods in Baghdad. And we have to remember that the Marines are not all over. They are still some neighborhoods in the Iraqi capital that the Marines have not been there yet. Today, for example, we saw them in one of the allara (ph) street. And it was their first time to patrol those streets. And they were actually trying patrol the streets in order to stop the looters, after residents in Baghdad have been complaining that the Marines are not doing anything to stop the looters.
So, again, the Marines are not all over Baghdad. There are still streets they haven't been in. They have to be careful going into certain areas. Some streets are very narrow, residential areas. They don't know who lives there. We do know that many of the Republican Guards that were deployed on the streets of Baghdad, just the night before the Marines really took over, the Republican Guard, Fedayeen Saddam, those are paramilitary forces, and ruling Baath party militias, those people were still there on the streets by the thousands, and they disappeared in one night. Many of them got rid of their uniforms. And I think the U.S. officials are still not sure if all of these people did really give up the fight, or are they preparing to do some kind of underground resistance, in some way trying to take revenge for what happened, or trying still -- they believe in the battle. And they think they should fight the U.S. forces.
And another point, that even that now we do see people welcoming the Marines, thanking the U.S. for removing Saddam Hussein, we still hear from many people here in Baghdad who tell you that they are thankful, that they want to make sure that the Marines will leave Iraq. And that if they don't do that very soon, they will defy them, because then they will perceive them as an occupying force. So it depends on what happens in the next few weeks, how things will unfold, in whether we will see these kind of fights and military conflict, whether it will weather away or will it actually escalate - Wolf.
BLITZER: Rula Amin, our reporter in Baghdad who's been helping us better understand what's been going on over the past hour and a half or so. Rula Amin at the Palestine Hotel, the hotel that houses not only the foreign press, hundreds of American and other foreign reporters in Baghdad, camera crews, but also the U.S. Marines who are based in that central part of Baghdad at the Palestine Hotel. Over the past hour and a half or so, we've seen this firefight that's been going on. We haven't heard anything lately. We haven't heard any shots explode. We haven't seen any of those flares that we have seen.
We haven't seen any additional arrests that we did see so much over the past hour and a half. But it's been a dramatic, pretty nerve-wracking few moments. Not just a few moments, considerable moments, for individuals at the Palestine Hotel. And, as we say, there's a lot of Marines and a lot of Western reporters at that hotel.
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