M A I N   N E W S

Allies zero in on Baghdad
  * US missile hits RAF jet    * 77 civilians killed, says Iraq

Southern Iraq, March 23
US forces surged across several fronts today to within 100 miles of Baghdad, but the battlefield success was tempered by news that a US missile might have downed a British plane and that an American soldier was suspected behind a deadly grenade attack on his comrades.

In perhaps the most dramatic advance, the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade covered roughly 230 miles in 40 hours to take positions about 100 miles from Baghdad.

In more than 70 tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles, the brigade raced day and night across the desert, at one point killing 100 Iraqi militiamen who confronted the Americans on machine gun-mounted civilian vehicles.

Not all went smoothly for the allies. Iraqi forces resisted vigorously in some areas. The British said a missing Royal Air Force plane might have been shot down accidentally by a Patriot missile near the Kuwait-Iraq border while returning from a mission. The aircraft's crew was missing. In Kuwait, American officials were forced to confront the prospect that one of their own soldiers had killed a comrade and wounded 13 others.

The grenade attack occurred early today at a 101st Air-borne Division command centre, where an assailant threw grenades into three tents.

The suspect, found hiding in a bunker, is an engineer from an engineering platoon. The motive "most likely was resentment," said Mr Max Blumenfeld, a US Army spokesman, who did not elaborate.

Three of the wounded were seriously injured; 10 had superficial wounds from fragments of the grenade, said Mr George Heath, civilian spokesman for Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the 101st Airborne's home base.

"Death is a tragic incident regardless of how it comes," he said, adding that: "But when it comes from a fellow comrade, it does even more to hurt morale."

On the battlefront, US and British forces captured territory, towns and military installations — often with little or no opposition. But in some locations, Iraqi forces fought back with artillery fire or guerrilla-style counterattacks.

Iraqi state television reported fighting between Iraqi ruling Baath Party militias and US-British forces near the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 95 miles south of Baghdad. It said a top Baath Party official in Najaf was killed.

US Army infantry battled Iraqi troops throughout the day at the city of As-Samawah, downriver from Najaf and 150 miles south of Baghdad, as the Americans seized two bridges across a canal near the Euphrates' southern bank.

BAGHDAD: Multiple explosions shook Baghdad this evening in one of the heaviest air attacks of the war so far, setting buildings ablaze and clouds of smoke into the sky. As many as 77 civilians were killed and 366 injured by US air strikes on the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said on Sunday. The dead and the injured were victims of cluster bombs, he told a press conference in Baghdad.

KALAK: Bombs rocked the northern Iraqi city of Mosul again after nightfall today as anti-aircraft fire streamed into the sky, a Reuters correspondent watching from Kurdish-held territory said. AP, AFP