http://www.islam-online.net/english/news/2003-04/03/article11.shtml
U.S. Kills 27 More Civilians, Nowhere Near Baghdad: Iraq

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A group of men, seen in this image from video, look at the wrecked fuselage bearing markings of guided missile in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, April 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Anglo-American warplanes intensified their air strikes on Baghdad Thursday, April 3, killing 27 civilians and wounding 193 others, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf said.
He added that early Thursday U.S. and British forces dropped cluster bombs on the Al-Doura area of Baghdad killing 14 people and injuring 66, while raids on Mahmoudia district, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Baghdad, killed five and injured 59.
In another attack, eight civilians were killed and five were wounded Thursday by a missile that hit a vegetable market at Nahrawan on the southeastern edge of Baghdad, an Iraqi hospital source confirmed said.
The casualties were taken to Baghdad's al-Kindi hospital, an AFP photographer reported.
The Doha-based U.S. Central Command announced it was investigating the report on the market attack.
U.S.-led bombing raids around the outskirts of Baghdad appeared to have been intensively stepped up on Thursday afternoon.
Repeated air strikes pounded the southern edges of the capital, whose peripheries, according to U.S. commanders, are controlled by the American troops.
Iraq's elite Republican Guard forces, in addition, have come under intense and regular bombardment.

U.S. Forces Nowhere Near Baghdad

Sahhaf also categorically denied claims that U.S. and British "mercenaries" were 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the centre of Baghdad or its main airport.
"They are not even within 100 miles (160 kilometers), they are on the move everywhere. They are a snake moving in the desert," he said, referring to U.S. and British troops as mercenaries and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney as "despicable".
"If that's the case we will welcome them with music and flowers," added Sahhaf mockingly.
"They remain trapped in combat with Iraqi resistance in every major town. It is not enough to say heavy casualties. We are destroying tanks, personnel carriers, killing them and we will continue," boasted the Iraqi official spokesman since the start of the U.S.-led invasion.

Saddam Airport Under Iraqi Control

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An Iraqi police officer walks at Saddam Hussein International Airport outside of Baghdad Thursday

Baghdad's Saddam International Airport was Thursday afternoon still under the full control of the Iraqi authorities, an AFP correspondent reported.
No bombing or fighting were visible at the airport, which lies 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the center of Baghdad.
"The airport is safe," airport manager Muafiq Abdullah al-Jaburi told journalists escorted there by the Iraqi Information Ministry.
Although airplanes have neither landed nor taken off at the airport since March 19, a day before the launch of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, Jaburi said that employees were "continuing to go about their work normally, according to set rotas."
"Maybe the Americans occupied another airport in the desert," joked Jaburi.
The airport's radar system and other installations "were hit in the first days of the war but the airport is currently safe," he said.
Al-Jazeera TV channel aired live broadcast from inside the airport showing the situation there was very calm and activity was as normal.
People were seen moving about and an aircraft on the runway, with no sign of Anglo-American troops as earlier alleged by the Americans.
"I can confirm they're outside the airport," claimed Major Randi Steffy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Central Command in Qatar.
Sahhaf asserted that Iraqi fighters south of Karbala shot down on Wednesday, April 2, an F-18 aircraft, an Apache combat helicopter and a Chinook troop carrying helicopter.
Saddam Fedayeen had also destroyed three tanks and a personnel carrier south of Karbala and another Apache in the southern Muthana province, he said, adding that the same unit destroyed another tank in Muthana.
A U.S. commander claimed Thursday U.S. forces were within 15 kilometers (nine miles) of Baghdad center near its main airport and controlled the southern approaches to the capital.