Fierce resistance blunts US push
BBC News, March 24, 2003

Iraqi troops are putting up stubborn resistance as US-led forces continue their advance on Baghdad.
The town of Karbala, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the capital, saw heavy fighting when US helicopter gunships engaged a division of Iraq's Republican Guard in a three-hour battle.

Further south, US and UK troops are also encountering stiff opposition around Nasariya and Basra, while reports from the north say the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk have come under air attack from coalition forces. [...]

Controversial broadcast

In addition to the seven marines killed, at least 25 were wounded in the Nasiriya fighting, US military officials said.

They also confirmed that a six-vehicle supply convoy had been ambushed near Nasiriya by Iraqi troops, and that 12 US personnel were missing.

The BBC's Andrew North, who is with US Marines in Nasiriya, said the determination and scale of the Iraqi resistance took the Americans by surprise.

Iraqi television has shown pictures of the bodies of several American soldiers and their wrecked vehicles, as well as interviews with five captured survivors of the ambush - one of them a woman.

The US has reacted angrily to the TV broadcasts, which were shown around the world by the al-Jazeera news channel.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri told the BBC that Iraq would not harm the prisoners

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Europe's TV stations show POWS despite Rumsfeld blast
Japan Today, March 24, 2003

LONDON — Many European television stations broadcast images of four men and a woman that Iraq said were American prisoners of war, despite criticism from US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Editorial staff defended their decision to air the pictures, saying that earlier footage showing Iraqi soldiers captured by U.S. forces had not been criticised. [...]

Britain's Sky News — the 24-hour news station owned by Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch — was the first to show the Iraqi television pictures of the visibly afraid soldiers. [...]

All three of Portugal's free-to-air television networks (SIC,TVI and state television RTP) led their main evening newscasts with images of both the U.S. prisoners of war being interviewed by Iraqi troops and the images of dead U.S. soldiers.

Before airing the footage SIC warned that the images were of "great violence" and not appropriate for more sensitive viewers while TVI said the images were bound to divide the U.S. even further over the war on Iraq. (Compiled from news reports)
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 6:16 pm