CNN's crew came under fire after attempting to enter the heart of Tikrit on Sunday.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/13/sprj.irq.war.main/index.html


Correspondent: Saddam loyalists control Tikrit

TIKRIT, Iraq (CNN) -- A CNN convoy came under a "hail of machine gun fire" Sunday morning as it passed through a checkpoint in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. A bodyguard returned fire.

At least one of the vehicles was hit. CNN correspondent Brent Sadler said one person received a head wound.

"That was a pretty ugly moment," he said.

Sadler, who had spent the previous two-and-a-half hours touring the outskirts of the town with a photographer, translator and bodyguard, decided to enter the town after residents assured him there was no fighting there. (Full story)

Earlier, Sadler, one of the few Western journalists to travel to the immediate outskirts of Tikrit, said the town looked abandoned -- with no military movement and only a few civilians on the road. Highway signs bearing the deposed Iraqi leader's image were still intact.

The town -- the only major Iraqi city not under U.S.-led coalition control -- did not appear to be defended until the CNN crew passed through the checkpoint.

The convoy was traveling well ahead of elements of the U.S. 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which set out Saturday toward Tikrit.

U.S. Central Command spokesman Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said forces would be "relentless" in their efforts to capture deposed President Saddam Hussein's ancestral home.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, U.S. troops are trying to restore order after intense fighting and subsequent looting.

Although the chaos and looting that engulfed Baghdad after the collapse of Saddam's regime seemed to subside Saturday, a U.S. Marine was killed when two gunmen posing as landscape workers attacked a checkpoint at a medical facility, Central Command said.

Marines returned fire, killing one attacker, but the other escaped, Marine sources said.

The man who shot the Marine had a Syrian identification card, Central Command said. The Marine's name was withheld pending notification of relatives.