AMP DOHA, Kuwait, March 25 — Allied forces have shifted the focus of their land campaign in Iraq to concentrate on defeating the fedayeen and other militia serving Saddam Hussein in the south before beginning the battle for Baghdad, senior officers said tonight.
The American strategy had been to bypass Iraq's southern cities and drive toward the capital to take on the Republican Guard and ultimately topple Mr. Hussein's government.
But the resistance from the militia groups to the rear of the advancing allies has been so stiff that commanders have concluded that this Iraqi threat has to be addressed first. The attack on the Republican Guard will be delayed while American and British forces fight in and around Iraq's southern cities. Allied commanders sought to dispel any suggestion that the delay would be long, suggesting that it would be measured in days, not weeks.
"We will go to where the enemy is," a senior American military official said tonight.
