Members of the Iraqi Republican guard, dressed in civilian clothes, sit behind barbed wire at an abandoned Iraqi military base under the control of U.S. Marines in the suburbs of the Iraqi capital Baghdad on April 8, 2003. U.S. Marines attacked a military airfield on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad on Tuesday, as U.S. forces tried to tighten their noose around the Iraqi capital, a Reuters correspondent said. Military sources said the Marines would gradually push forward towards the city centre.