IN CENTRAL IRAQ - American soldiers engaged Republican Guard forces Monday in some of the war's first pitched battles with Saddam Hussein's elite troops.
As the allied force massed for an expected assault on Baghdad, a senior American military official in Qatar said, "We are prepared to pay a very high price, because we are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away."
Civilians were bearing the costs of war as well: U.S. troops killed at least seven Iraqi women and children Monday at a checkpoint after the Iraqis' van did not stop as ordered.
President Bush and other world leaders warned that the push to unseat Saddam may return terrorism to American soil. Bush told Coast Guard officials at the Port of Philadelphia that "the dying regime in Iraq may try to bring terror to our shores." And Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said the U.S.-led war would produce "100 new bin Ladens," driving more Muslims to anti-Western militancy.
In a swath of cities about 50 miles from Baghdad, many units of the Army's 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions engaged in their first face-to-face combat with Iraq's Republican Guard. U.S. officials estimated "hundreds" of Iraqi troops died in the battles near the strategic city of Karbala - clashes that played out amid palm trees and mud huts.
Other Republican Guard troops were cut down by airstrikes and tank fire as they moved through the open desert to support a sagging guard force near Al Hillah, east of Karbala.
A Central Command official confirmed reports that a tank commander from the Republican Guard's Nebuchadnezzar Division had been captured during Monday's engagements south of Baghdad. He said the capture was significant because that division was thought to have been positioned north of Baghdad.
The official said it suggested "things are so bad for the units in the south that (Iraqi commanders) decided they had to bring this very valuable unit south to stiffen the defense."
But such encouraging news for the allies was tempered by word that U.S. soldiers killed at least seven women and children, wounding two others, at a checkpoint near Najaf. The U.S. Central Command stated that the soldiers "exercised considerable restraint" in light of Saturday's suicide attack nearby that killed four U.S. servicemen.
It said soldiers motioned for the driver of the van, carrying 13 people, to stop. When it failed to, the soldiers fired warning shots and then fired into the vehicle's engine. But the van continued moving toward the checkpoint. About a dozen bursts of cannon fire from Bradley fighting vehicles then tore into the passenger compartment.
According to The Washington Post, a captain then shouted over the radio at a platoon leader: "You just ... killed a family because you didn't fire a warning shot soon enough!"
The incident occurred as allied forces bolstered their defenses along their main supply route feeding the forces arrayed against the Republican Guard. In recent days, some forward troops have had difficulty getting rations and fuel as Iraqi militias have executed hit-and-run attacks on supply convoys.
Military planners now are moving to resolve that situation, pulling allied troops off other duty - such as handling prisoners of war - and adding them to convoy security details.
The allied air attack continued on Baghdad and Republican Guard divisions ringing the capital. About two-thirds of the 800 strike missions flown Monday targeted the guard units.
U.S. warplanes flying from ships in the Persian Gulf hunted Iraqi ground positions early Tuesday, continuing "battlefield preparation" for a major ground assault. Following radio-jamming Prowlers, F/A-18 Hornets took out Iraqi artillery pieces across a wide front from Karbala in the west through to Al Amarah near the Iranian border, a Navy official said.
On the war's northern front, allied commanders said their assault on Ansar al-Islam militants turned up a list of names of suspected militants living in the U.S. But as many as 300 members of the extremist group were believed to have escaped over snowy mountains into neighboring Iran. Key Ansar al-Islam leaders were among them, Kurdish sources said.
Aircraft hit Iraqi positions near the northern city of Kalak, aiding Kurdish forces.
As the war churned through its 12th day, the Pentagon said fresh U.S. forces are flowing to the Persian Gulf.
A U.S. military official at Central Command in Qatar, who spoke on condition of anonymity, made it clear those and other soldiers would see intense fighting to ensure Saddam is toppled. "If that means a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties," he said. "We are not going to walk away from this thing. I understand that there is no such thing as a clean war."
Secretary of State Colin Powell noted the hostile reaction in much of the Arab world to the Iraq war. But he said he expected that public opinion would grow more favorable once Iraqis are freed from the fear of Saddam's regime and can speak out.
The State Department announced that Powell would visit Turkey and Belgium this week to repair relations with Turkey and discuss possible European help in rebuilding Iraq.
After falling short in the Security Council, Arab envoys at the U.N. decided to seek an emergency session of the full 191-nation General Assembly to push for an immediate end to the war.
While those diplomats pushed for peace, the fighting intensified along the Euphrates River in the towns and cities leading toward Baghdad. After 12 hours of shelling, smart-bomb attacks and tank fire, American soldiers surveyed the wreckage and smoldering rubble left from one of their first clashes with entrenched Republican Guards.
Col. Jeff Ingram, head of a 3rd Infantry tank battalion, said he respected the guard's fighting spirit, but that much of their equipment was old and some of their vehicles clearly inoperable.
Unfurling on sandy terrain dotted with palm trees and small mud huts, Monday's battle filled the air with rocket-propelled grenades, shrapnel and assault rifle rounds.
The first troops - including about two dozen Abrams tanks, 20 Apache helicopters and numerous Bradley Fighting Vehicles - rolled out of Kifl shortly after dawn.
After five hours of intense fighting along the four-lane highway headed to Al Hillah, elements of the Nebuchadnezzar Division of the Republican Guard had taken numerous losses, including a half-dozen tanks, before retreating north to the outskirts of Al Hillah. Once there, tanks and Apache helicopters repeatedly hit guard positions, destroying numerous bunkers and Iraqi artillery equipment.
An 18-year-old soldier from the 101st Airborne died in the attack, just a few miles south of Al Hillah. He was shot by a sniper while riding on a tank, officials said. Three Iraqi civilians were injured as well after being struck by 50-caliber machine-gun fire when two men riding in their truck opened fire on U.S. troops.
In the town of Hindiyah, Army Rangers probing to determine the strength of Republican Guard units spotted an elderly woman on a bridge. At first they thought she was dead, but during breaks in the gunfire whizzing over her head, she sat up and waved for help.
Using the bridge's iron beams and an armored vehicle as cover, three Rangers on foot helped medics rescue her. She was taken away on a stretcher, and Monday's battle for the town of 80,000 resumed.
Across town, a tank company fought Iraqi troops guarding an ammunition depot, killing 20 men and capturing 20 others, all wearing the insignia of the Nebuchadnezzar Division, based in Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
In the southern Iraqi city of As Samawah, allied troops by Monday night had captured more than 50 enemy soldiers and civilians, including one man dressed in old U.S. Army desert camouflage. The prisoners, who were mostly dressed in Iraqi military garb, were transported back to the 82nd Airborne Division infantry camp with their heads covered and interviewed by a Kuwaiti soldier.
"Even after they were captured, these guys showed a lot of resistance," said 1st Sgt. Mike Boom of the 82nd Airborne's 1st Battalion.
(Dellios reported from Qatar; Quintanilla from central Iraq. Chicago Tribune correspondents Bob Kemper in Philadelphia, Laurie Goering in Nasiriyah, Howard Witt in Washington, James Janega aboard the USS Constellation, Aamer Madhani in As Samawah and Paul Salopek in northern Iraq also contributed to this report.)
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