Ground War Starts, Airstrikes Continue As U.S. Keeps Focus on Iraq's Leaders

Soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division poured across the border around 8 p.m. (noon EST) at the western edge of the advance. To the east, the Marine 1st Expeditionary Force moved about the same time to seize control of and protect Iraq's southern oil fields, where several wells were reported to be ablaze. At the eastern edge of the invasion arc, on the swampy Faw peninsula, U.S. Navy and British commandos seized oil shipping and pumping facilities along the Persian Gulf.

Senior Marine officers reported ineffective resistance and no American casualties. But while the regular Iraqi army units defending southern Iraq have been described as weak and prone to surrender, they did not appear to be laying down their arms en masse at the initial contact. Front-line Marine and 3rd Infantry Division units reported engaging a few Iraqi infantry and tanks; officers said the clashes killed 14 Iraqi soldiers and destroyed 14 armored vehicles.

"Right now, they're fighting, not surrendering," a senior Marine officer said.

The U.S. forces did not detect the use of chemical or biological weapons by Iraqi units, officers said, but they nevertheless forged into Iraq wearing their full protective suits and toting gas masks. Similarly, the handful of Iraqi missiles fired into Kuwait carried conventional warheads, officials in Kuwait reported.

The push into Iraq and the airstrikes in Baghdad formally began a U.S. military campaign -- Operation Iraqi Freedom -- aimed at removing the Baath Party government and Hussein, who has ruled Iraq with ruthless efficiency for three decades and has long defied international demands that he cease efforts to build weapons of mass destruction.

Unlike the U.S.-led campaign in 1991 to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait, the conflict that began today has failed to win endorsement from the U.N. Security Council or many foreign governments normally allied with the United States. But it has been cast by Bush as a necessary endeavor to destroy what his administration says is a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons -- arms that Iraq insists it does not possess.