Other developments in war with Iraq

  • Coalition casualties to date:

U.S. military: 79 dead.
British military: 27 dead.

  • Family of Pfc. Jessica Lynch — her parents, Deadra and Gregory, two siblings and a cousin — visited the rescued POW at a hospital in Germany.
  • U.S. warplanes struck a convoy of allied Kurdish fighters and U.S. Special Forces during a northern battle in one of the deadliest friendly fire attacks of the Iraqi war. At least 18 people were killed and more than 45 wounded, including senior Kurdish commanders, Kurdish officials said.
  • Marines pulled intelligence from a shattered Republican Guard headquarters after a night of fiery bombardments, and they searched a suspected terrorist training camp, finding the shell of a passenger jet believed to be used for hijacking practice.
  • In Moscow, the Kremlin said a convoy of Russian Embassy diplomats came under fire, and some were wounded, as they were evacuating from Baghdad and starting to drive toward Syria.
  • Between 2,000 and 3,000 Iraqi fighters were killed as the 3rd Infantry Division moved through southwestern Baghdad on Saturday, U.S. Central Command spokesman Jim Wilkinson said Sunday.
  • Deafening explosions rocked central Baghdad early Sunday as Iraqi troops, members of President Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia and teenage soldiers patrolled streets to protect the capital from U.S.-led forces.
  • U.S. Marines attempted to take a bridge over a canal leading into Baghdad. Iraqi fighters had rigged the bridge with explosives and dug out the embankment under the bridge to weaken it. Marines said they now control the bridge but cannot cross it.
  • Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf on Sunday asked Iraqis to remain calm and not be taken by rumors. He also warned citizens against firing their guns for no requested reason.
  • British troops staged their largest military incursion into the southern city of Basra, rumbling into Iraq’s second-largest city with a column of 40 armored personnel carriers Sunday.
  • Coalition aircraft conducted strikes on the Basra residence of Ali Hassan al-Majid, a member of Saddam’s inner circle who once ordered a chemical weapons attack on Kurds, Central Command said. On Sunday, coalition forces sifting through the rubble positively identified the body of his bodyguard. It was still not known whether al-Majid also had been killed.
  • Several hundred soldiers of the Iraqi National Congress exile group were flown to an area near the city of Nasiriyah to join coalition forces as liaisons to the Iraqi people.