Day 15: Allies take aim at the enemy - and critics

You'd be foolish to base anything on mood, that most volatile and untrustworthy of mass emotions, but as the Iraqi war entered its third week yesterday there were signs that last week's widespread pessimism about the conflict's outcome was, rightly or wrongly, shifting.

With leading American forces last night reported to have taken Baghdad international airport on the edge of the city, and signs that some Iraqi Muslim clerics were now willing to ask their people not to resist, there was a new feeling abroad. It was not the façile optimism of the start of the war, rather a considered view that the conflict is winnable.

No one was proclaiming it. Indeed, people were at pains to emphasise the difficulties. The Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, telling the House of Commons that coalition forces had made "remarkable progress" and were tightening their strategic grip on the country, cautioned MPs not to "underestimate the task that still faces our forces, or the length of time that it may take to complete". He also highlighted the difficulties caused by The Independent's Robert Fisk, as he singled him out for criticism.

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, told the Newspaper Society annual conference that as the Allied advance neared Baghdad, soldiers would face "fierce resistance" and perhaps more setbacks.

But the signs of a change in mood were there. Take the markets, those infallible guides to what self-interested rich people and big corporations think is going to happen next. Share prices were up for the third day running. Not a lot, but up, rather than down. What was down was the price of gold, to its lowest level for four months, a sure indication that millionaires and company treasurers feel calm waters may be ahead, rather than choppy ones. And most of all, the oil price was falling steadily, from $34 (£22.50) a barrel a week ago to $28 (£18) a barrel yesterday. Analysts clearly do not think Iraqi oil is going to be off the world market for long.

There were other fascinating straws in the wind. The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, called yesterday for the first time for the removal of Saddam Hussein, dropping his earlier strong objection to regime change as a goal of war. It was a volte-face of real significance, indicating that his government's thoughts are moving from the conduct of the war, which it so much opposed, to the rebuilding of post-Saddam Iraq.

Most of all, military analysts looking at the huge leap forward the leading American forces have made in the past two days towards Baghdad asserted that critics of the war were simply wrong to claim that when the US armoured offensive halted in central Iraq, it had run out of steam and/or was not big enough to cope with attacks from Iraqi irregulars.

"I think they knew exactly what they were doing," said Mike McGinty, of the Royal United Services Institute in London. "The operational pause earlier in the week was preparing for this. I think they were preparing for quite a stretch. The important thing was to make sure they destroyed and overran the Republican Guard to stop them retreating into Baghdad." The surging US advance yesterday, which reportedly took them to the outskirts of the capital, consolidated the rapid progress their forces made on Wednesday, when the push northwards restarted.

As darkness fell, reporters "embedded" with the 3rd US Infantry Division relayed images of tanks moving on to the tarmac of Baghdad's Saddam international airport, 12 miles from the city centre and four miles from its edges, with little resistance other than scattered firing by footsoldiers and men in pick-up trucks. There were reports of air raids in the area earlier in the day. In the city centre, the lights suddenly blacked out – the first widespread electrical failure in Baghdad since the US-led bombardment began two weeks ago.

In broad terms, it was possible that what had not happened in the past two days was almost as significant as what had. The much-vaunted last stand by elite divisions of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard in front of Baghdad did not materialise; neither had the much-feared reaction by a cornered Iraqi military of using chemical or biological weapons, as their heartland came under attack. Both might still take place – four Republican Guard divisions were reported to be moving elements southwards to defend the city – but US spokesmen claimed this was evidence of an Iraqi cave-in.

"We are getting closer and closer," said Navy Capt Frank Thorp of US Central Command in Qatar. "We will be in Baghdad within a matter of hours from when we decide to go."

Navy Lt Mark Kitchens, another spokesman, said: "US forces are beginning to see credible signs that the Iraqi forces are being overwhelmed and will soon collapse."

The coalition took further strong encouragement from a development in the Shia Muslim holy city of Najaf. US forces said the senior Shia cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who had been held under house arrest by the Iraqis, had now ordered local people not to interfere with the US-led invasion troops.

Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa "instructing the population to remain calm and to not interfere with coalition actions", Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said at Central Command in Qatar. "We believe this is a significant turning point and another indicator that the Iraqi regime is approaching its end," he said. US officers were said to be negotiating with the ayatollah about how to govern Najaf in the absence of pro-Saddam forces.

Other military spokesmen continued to counsel caution. "We are planning for a difficult fight ahead in Baghdad," Maj-Gen Stanley McChrystal said at the Pentagon. The Americans may now face a choice between continuing their advance into the city of five million people, with the possibility of costly street fighting, or waiting for reinforcements while giving Iraqis a chance to challenge President Saddam's regime themselves.

If American troops were knocking on the dictator's door, figuratively speaking, at the gates of his capital, they were doing it literally 50 miles to the south where special forces raided the Tharthar Palace, known to be one of the favoured residences of the Iraqi leader and his sons. They found him not at home. Special forces operations were continuing across the country, with dams being seized and Iraqi command posts infiltrated, and more detail emerged ofthe most spectacular special forces action of the war so far, the rescue of US Private Jessica Lynch from a hospital behind Iraqi lines.

The 19-year-old army supply clerk, who was captured in an ambush at Nasiriyah on 23 March, is now in a US army hospital in Germany with two broken legs, a broken arm and bullet wounds. Reports from Washington yesterday painted a remarkable picture of her heroism in the firefight that led to her capture. She was said to have shot several Iraqi soldiers and to have kept firing even after she had several gunshot wounds, finally running out of ammunition. The chief medic who monitored her condition all the way from Kuwait to Germany summed up his assessment of her trenchantly: "She must be tough as nails."

In the north and south of the country yesterday, the war continued. Kurdish peshmerga, backed by small groups of US soldiers, fought Iraqi troops along a road leading to the northern city of Mosul: US aircraft pounded Iraqi positions during a fierce firefight lasting about an hour. F-16 jets attacked the Iraqi positions and a sequence of flashes and huge columns of smoke could be seen rising from the Iraqi lines. A Kurdish fighter said their forces were within three miles of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, but this could not be independently confirmed.

In the south, British forces surrounding Basra, Iraq's second city, had advanced to just four miles from the centre, making their way steadily inwards despite harassing fire from Iraqi irregulars. Soldiers crossed the Shatt-al-Basra waterway for the first time to set up a base within the city, and established a vehicle checkpoint at an important crossroads.

"In the Basra province, our forces are operating against two types of opposition – Iraq's armed forces and irregular forces," said Colonel Chris Vernon. "We're conducting conventional warfare operations against the former and internal security counter-insurgency operations against the latter."

British troops in the Basra region were continuing their attempts to win the confidence of local people still distrustful of a coalition whose forces failed to support their revolt against Saddam Hussein at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, allowing the Iraqi dictator brutally to suppress their uprising.

Besides distributing food and water, sweets and leaflets in Arabic, yesterday the squaddies tried another tactic – football. Men of Juliet Company, 42 Commando, Royal Marines, put together a team to take on a local XI in the town of Khor Az Zubahir. (The local captain sported an immaculate Arsenal shirt.) The marines lost 9-3, but they considered they had scored a considerable victory in the public relations arena.

But if much was going the coalition's way, the cost was real. A TV reporter from Fox News broadcast live to the world as an American Abrams tank in front of him was hit and burst into flames. The Americans lost their first fixed-wing aircraft of the war, a US Navy F/A-18C Hornet flying from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, believed to have been downed with a surface-to-air missile after a bombing mission over southern Iraq. A search was going on for the pilot. A UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was brought down, reportedly by small arms fire near Karbala, with seven soldiers killed and four injured: it was the second helicopter lost in actual combat since the start of the war. (An Apache gunship went down last week and its two crew members were captured.)

Last night Baghdad was plunged into darkness as explosions thundered through its outskirts, and the city appeared to be without power. Earlier, Saddam Hussein had exhorted Iraqis to "fight them with your hands", according to a statement read on Iraqi satellite television. It was addressed to the people of the region southeast of the capital, and was read by the Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who disputed coalition claims of battle successes. "All this is to cover their disappointment and inability," he said. "They are not even 100 miles away from Baghdad. They are like a snake moving in the desert. They have no foothold in Iraq ... They do not even control Umm Qasr [the southern port city held by British forces]."

The whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, and why he has not appeared live on television, remained unclear. When asked about him, Mr Sahaf said: "I think you have seen his picture," referring to footage aired on Wednesday of a smiling President Saddam chairing a meeting of close aides. "He is very calm, confident." But visible, he was not.

Tony Blair, on the other hand, was on parade at the home of the British Army, Aldershot, and received some welcome support when he met the families of British troops fighting in the Gulf.

He spent more than an hour talking to soldiers' wives, discussing their concerns about the progress of the war. Joanne Anderton, 27, the wife of Lance Bombardier Ray Anderton, who is serving with an-9 artillery regiment in Basra, urged the Prime Minister to ignore criticism of the war effort. "I said that we admired him for doing what he was doing," she said. "He was quite taken aback. He looked quite emotional and said thank you."

President Bush engaged in a similar exercise, but where Mr Blair tried to be intimate and personal, the US President leant more to the grandiose. Speaking to 20,000 people, including 12,000 Marines, he declared: "A vice is closing and the days of a brutal regime are coming to an end." He added: "There's no finer sight than to see 12,000 US Marines."