SHATRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iraqis shouting "Welcome to Iraq" greeted Marines who entered the town of Shatra Monday after storming it with planes, tanks and helicopter gunships.
A foot patrol picked its way through the small southern town, 20 miles north of the city of Nassiriya, after being beckoned in by a crowd of people.
"There's no problem here. We are happy to see Americans," one young man shouted.
The welcome was a tonic for soldiers who have not always received the warm reception they expected after U.S. and British leaders told them the Iraqi people were waiting to be freed from repression under President Saddam Hussein.
"It's not every day you get to liberate people," said one delighted Marine.
As they searched the town, the Marines pushed back the excited crowd. An interpreter urged local people through a loudspeaker on a Humvee not to hinder their movements.
But as night approached with the town not fully under their control, the Marines pulled back.
It had been a day of mixed fortunes.
It began with a predawn raid to try to kill senior Iraqi officials believed to be directing guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops and their supply convoys.
The ambushes have slowed the advance on Baghdad. This Marine unit retraced its steps back south down Highway 7 to Shatra after bypassing the Iraqi forces there in their rapid advance last week.
IRAQI GENERAL, FEDAYEEN FLEE
Planes dropped precision-guided bombs on four targets during the morning raid.
Tanks and armored personnel carriers then moved to the edge of the town and helicopter gunships raked the rubble-strewn target sites with heavy machinegun fire.
The targets were the local Baath party headquarters and "associated planning sites," Marine officers said.
Having entered the town, the Marines searched without success for the body of a comrade who was killed last week and whose corpse was believed to be in a hospital in the town.
They trampled over the ruins of a local headquarters of Saddam's Baath party.
Another Baath party building across the street had been set ablaze by looters who carried away sofas from inside.
Intelligence reports had suggested that Ali Hassan al-Majeed, or "Chemical Ali," the cousin whom Saddam has put in charge of the southern front, was in the town.
But Majeed, who earned his nickname for overseeing the use of poison gas against Kurdish villagers in 1988, was nowhere to be seen.
The Marines had also received intelligence reports that an Iraqi general was holed up inside the town but arrived just too late to capture him, military officials said.
"He got away just before we got here," said company commander Capt. Mike Martin. "We believe there are about 200 to 300 Baath party loyalists and Saddam Fedayeen irregulars in the town," he added.
The Fedayeen paramilitary forces had also fled.
Marines found a light still on and the telephone ringing when they entered what was thought to be their headquarters.
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"My husband is begging me to go back to him, but I will not. He is not a real man unless he carries a weapon and goes fighting the Americans," the woman told a companion while praying at the Kazimain Shi'ite mosque in the Iraqi capital.
27 Mar 2003 18:01
Iraqi Shi'ites say they are patriots first
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At one of the holiest shrines in Shi'ite Islam, Zeinab spoke gently but firmly against the U.S. and British invasion of her country.
"My husband is begging me to go back to him, but I will not. He is not a real man unless he carries a weapon and goes fighting the Americans," the woman told a companion while praying at the Kazimain Shi'ite mosque in the Iraqi capital.
The northern district of Baghdad where the shrine is located is inhabited by Iraq's majority Shi'ites, whom U.S.-led forces hoped would rise up against President Saddam Hussein and welcome their invasion after years of discrimination and persecution.
During three decades in power, Saddam has packed the government with his Sunni co-religionists, put down several Shi'ite uprisings and purged holy cities, such as Najaf and Kerbala, of Shi'ite scholars and clerics opposed to him.
Islam is divided between the dominant Sunni sect and Shi'ism. In Iraq, the situation is reversed with Shi'ites accounting for an estimated 60 percent of the population.
British military intelligence reported earlier this week that the mainly Shi'ite population of Iraq's second city, Basra, might have started an uprising against officials of Saddam's Baath Party, but officials later played down the report.
In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, Shi'ites rose against Saddam, expecting support from the international forces which ended Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But that support never came and Saddam brutally crushed the uprising.
"SHAME IN LIFE AND TORTURE IN AFTERLIFE"
Most visitors to the Kazimain stop at the door to read an edict by Ayatollah al-Sisstani, a top Shi'ite cleric in Iraq.
"A catastrophe will befall the Islamic world if -- God forbid -- the aggressors realise their schemes in Iraq. Any help submitted to them is a great sin. Shame in life and torture in the afterlife will follow," the edict says.
"Iraqis will definitely stand together against any invasion. They will disappoint the aggressors with the help of God," said Sisstani, who lives in Najaf, Shi'ism foremost learning centre.
Iraqi forces are fighting U.S. forces around Najaf and Kerbala to prevent their advance on Baghdad from the Shi'ite dominated southwest.
The Sisstani edict was a reflection of the anti-U.S. sentiment in the Shi'ite community, said Sheikh Hadi, one of the Kazimain's keepers.
"The Americans think the Shi'ites will rise up again, But they forget that we consider them invaders," the sheikh said.
"The Americans never had mercy on the people of this region, neither did the British. We remember their black days of colonisation," he added.
After largely staying away since the war started a week ago, visitors are trickling back to Kazimain, the burial place of two of the 12 holy Imams, or preachers, of Shi'ite Islam.
The mosque was restored by Saddam. Its walls and doors are an amazing mix of blue marble, mirrors, crystal, silver and gold. Ornate chandeliers hang from its domes.
Men and women march in awe around the two graves of Musa al-Kazim and Mohammad al-Jawad, the two Imams or preachers who lived in the eighth and ninth centuries.
"They come because the two Imams are so close to God and God would not turn down a request that came through them. It is a concept similar to Christianity and the twelve apostles," Sheikh Hadi said.
"Pilgrims are starting to come back despite the war. They are coming even from Basra and Nassiriya," he added.
Shi'ite Islam was born in what is now Iraq. The schism with Sunni Islam dates back to when the Prophet's grandson Imam Hussein was killed in Kerbala in 680 by a rival Muslim force.