Posted on 03/22/2003 10:54:27 AM PST by kattracks
U.S. Marines say control Umm Qasr port
By Adrian Croft
UMM QASR, Iraq, March 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Marines said they won control of the strategic Iraqi port of Umm Qasr on Saturday despite pockets of resistance in residential areas of the town.
The Marines also said that U.S. and British forces had taken between 400 and 450 Iraqi prisoners in fighting around Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep-water port, and the nearby Faw peninsula which controls access from the Gulf to Iraq's tiny coast.
"Both the new and the old ports are secure," Marine Captain Rick Crevier, one of the commanders of the effort to capture Umm Qasr's twin port facilities launched at dawn on Friday, said after nightfall on Saturday.
But he added that there were still pockets of resistance from an estimated two dozen fighters in a residential district near the port.
He also said that bomb disposal experts had found several booby traps in the ports during checks on Saturday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington on Friday that U.S. and British forces had already captured Umm Qasr. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf on Saturday dismissed Rumsfeld's statement as "illusions and lies."
Reuters reporter Adrian Croft, in Umm Qasr, said the port was quiet after nightfall after some bursts of artillery fire in the afternoon. Marines put on gas masks during a brief alert on Saturday afternoon.
HUMANITARIAN AID
U.S.-led forces say they need the port to send humanitarian aid to show ordinary Iraqis that Washington and London are serious about helping rebuild Iraq after their planned overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.
Military experts say the port might also help to resupply U.S.-led forces if the war drags on.
"Our ambition is to open the port and get humanitarian aid in to the people of southern Iraq as quickly as possible," Group Captain Al Lockwood, main spokesman for British forces at command headquarters in Qatar, told Reuters.
Flight Lieutenant Peter Darling told reporters at the Qatar headquarters: "What we're trying to do now is clear that waterway of mines and obstructions to get ships in for humanitarian aid.
"It's a way of making sure we don't end up with a huge refugee problem," he added. He said the forces hoped to make a first shipment of humanitarian aid in about 72 hours.
Earlier, Colonel Thomas Waldhauser, Commanding Officer of the 15th Marine expeditionary unit, said defenders were switching into civilian clothes and that some had been brought in at the last minute to resist the U.S.-led invasion.
Croft also saw British forces delivering about 50 prisoners of war to a small beach at Umm Qasr in 10 rubber dinghies. Wearing plastic handcuffs, they were transferred to a warehouse with other prisoners.
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