Copter crash kills 12, allied troops invade southern Iraq
( 2003-03-21 14:12 ) (7 )

Two Pave Low helicopters (foreground) take part in a training mission in this April 5, 2001 file photo. A US Marine helicopter crashed in Kuwait Thursday, killing all 16 American and British soldiers aboard. Other two US military helicopters made crash landings in intense operations March 20, 2003 along the Kuwait-Iraq border and one was later destroyed by American warplanes to keep it out of the Iraqi hands. [Reuters]

Twelve US and British soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash late Thursday as troops crossed into southern Iraq to start the ground war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime.

The CH46E Sea Knight transport helicopter crashed in Kuwait at around 0040 GMT Friday. "There were 12 people on board, a mix of American and British troops. Initial reports indicate there were no survivors," the Pentagon said in a statement.

US troops met little initial resistance as more than 1,000 members of the US Army's Third Infantry Division and the First Marine Expeditionary Force followed up a fierce artillery barrage and moved across the desert border at about 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) on Thursday.

Captain Andrew Valles, spokesman for the infantry division's First Brigade, said that according to the reports he had received, "there was little to no resistance" from the Iraqis on the ground.

Officers with the division reported sporadic encounters with the Iraqis. They said an M1-A1 tank and three Bradley Fighting Vehicles opened fire on an Iraqi observation post, killing three men.

Another US marine officer told reporters that 25 Iraqi soldiers surrendered to US forces shortly after crossover.

The Iraqis gave themselves up, apparently without incident, soon after the First Marine Expeditionary Force rolled into southern Iraq from Kuwait on Thursday, said the officer.

Iraqi leaders were also kept off balance with a second set of cruise missile strikes in Baghdad and the Qatari Al-Jazeera television reported that explosions were heard in or around the northern city of Mosul early Friday.

Powerful explosions rocked the Iraqi capital, sending towers of acrid smoke into skies filled with seemingly ineffectual Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, in the second wave of missile strikes on the city in 16 hours.

At least one building, close to a key Saddam compound and to the planning ministry on the banks of the Tigris river, was set ablaze as the missiles hit targets close to government offices and one of Saddam's many presidential palaces.

Just before the attack, state television showed Saddam meeting with the Iraqi leadership. It said he told them he was "confident" of victory.

The raid lasted around 20 minutes, and the all-clear was sounded after about an hour. The alert sirens went off again around two hours later but no more attacks were heard.

US army sources said the initial objectives of the ground force push were strategic targets near the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, oil fields and military installations.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said British forces were engaged in land, air and sea operations against Iraq, with a mission "to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction."

British Royal Marine commandos also launched an amphibious assault in southern Iraq late Thursday, the BBC reported, citing a journalist embedded with the force.

The elite troops launched the assault at the northern tip of the Gulf near the Fao peninsula, southeast of Basra, a vital oil export sea route for Iraq.

However, Iraqi television denied that US and British troops had captured the Iraqi Gulf port city of Umm Qasr, as earlier reported by the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA.

Iraq's main seaport was still in Iraqi hands, the television said.

Iraq meanwhile fired 10 missiles at Kuwait, where some 280,000 US and British troops have assembled in the past few weeks to fulfil a 16-month-old threat by US President George W. Bush to use force if necessary to strip Saddam of his suspected arsenals of chemical and biological weapons.

But none of Iraq's missiles were known to have caused casualties. Two of the missiles landed in the sea off the coast of the emirate and another three were intercepted by US Patriot missiles.

All the missiles had conventional warheads, but fear they could have carried chemical or biological weapons sent Kuwaitis scrambling for gas masks.

Some 20,000 marines and 5,000 vehicles from Regimental Combat Team (RCT) One and Regimental Combat Team Five were leading the US ground push with support from the US Army's Third Infantry Division, Marine officers told reporters.

A marine officer said thousands of more troops were poised to head into Iraq within hours.

One officer said the initial troops had been scheduled to cross into Iraq early Friday but moved up their drive by 10 hours after seeing Iraqi forces laying mines north of their sand berms.

Whereas the 1991 Gulf War that ousted Saddam's forces from Kuwait started with a six-week air campaign to soften up Iraqi defences, the ground offensive Thursday began less than 15 hours after US forces launched hostilities with air strikes on Baghdad.

Before the ground troops moved, US artillery batteries fired some 300 shells in 15 minutes into Iraq, along with half-a-dozen salvos from multiple launch rocket systems, an AFP correspondent said.

Backing the US and British troops are 600-700 aircraft, dozens of ships, tanks, helicopters and state-of-the-art weapons ranging from precision-guided bombs and missiles to still-secret electronic warfare devices.

The 1991 Gulf War and economic sanctions have reduced the Iraqi army from a million-strong fighting force to about 400,000 troops, most of them poorly equipped and underfed.

Still, experts said there remained a well-trained core that could still prove a deadly resistance to US forces if, as expected, Saddam deployed them in and around his strongholds: Baghdad and his northern hometown of Tikrit.

The Americans also fear Saddam could resort to chemical and biological warfare despite Washington's threats to punish Iraqi commanders who obey such orders.