The fighting is not by any means over, a US spokesman warned, writesDeaglán de Bréadún in Doha
Saddam International Airport in Baghdad has been renamed by Coalition forces but Iraqi forces could still be present in underground bunkers, Brig Gen Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations with US Central Command (Centcom), told a news conference in the capital of Qatar.
"The airport now has a new name, Baghdad International Airport. It is a gateway to the future of Iraq," he said at Centcom's forward base at Camp As Sayliyah yesterday afternoon.
Asked if the Coalition had total control of the airport at this stage, he said there could still be Iraqi forces in underground bunkers: "This is an ongoing process, we found that there are underground facilities at this airport, for example. Those require clearance."
Asked for details of the battle at the airport on Thursday night, he said: "The amount of force that we encountered there was not intense in terms of the nature of the fighting."
Suggesting that the attack had caught Iraq's military commanders by surprise, he said: "We think perhaps we may have gotten inside of the enemy's decision-making cycle and arrived with a tempo that put us in place before they could respond to the intending threat. But now it is a matter of history, now it is in our possession."
The capture of the airport had three benefits for the Coalition: "Firstly, it prevents the departure of regime leaders, with it being in our possession. It is an airport and so in due time it would be something that could be used for air operations when we decide to put it back into operation, and certainly that is important, either for current military operations or for future operations after the conflict is complete.
"Most importantly, we preserved it for the future of Iraq," he said.
Asked if the electricity had been disabled in Baghdad by Coalition forces, he replied: "We saw that the power went off in Baghdad last night. We didn't do it. It is as simple as that." Asked about the likely level of resistance by the Iraqis in the capital he said the fighting was not by any means over.
"We still anticipate that special Republican Guard forces are operating from within Baghdad or on the outskirts of Baghdad," he said. "There is a presence of force that is out there still.
"So, in answer to the question, Will there be more fighting? Yes, there will be more fighting, the fighting is not complete by any stretch of the imagination. We remain cautiously optimistic," he said.
Asked by The Irish Times how the use of cluster bombs tied-in with the Coalition's stated policy of minimising civilian casualties through the use of precision-guided weapons, he said: "There are a wide variety of munitions available to the Coalition. We use those based on tactical circumstances and also on the intended effect at a given time.
"Cluster munitions are used to create situational obstacles, as we describe them, and that is to create an obstacle related to a tactical purpose.
"If we wanted to prevent the movement of a Republican Guard force, for example, we might use that munition, or a munition like it, to prevent their moving and to keep them in place for further destruction."
He said that over 37 million propaganda leaflets had been dropped, "as we continue our efforts to communicate directly with the Iraqi population and with Iraqi military units".
During an operation in western Iraq, US special forces had come across a building which they believed was probably a "training school" for nuclear, chemical or biological warfare rather than a site for the preparation of military operations using these weapons.
A number of sample bottles were found, one of which was labelled "Tabun", a chemical warfare agent developed in the 1940s. "Some of these were taken away and testing is ongoing."
A car exploded at a US special operations checkpoint in western Iraq, reportedly killing three coalition soldiers, a pregnant woman and the car's driver. Brig Gen Brooks said that "these are not military actions; these are terrorist actions." He said it was impossible to know if the woman voluntarily took part.