Battle: During the fighting 18 Marines and 11 soldiers were killed and about 50 were wounded, while the Iraqi resistance was neutralized fairly rapidly thereafter.

2d MEB’s Task Force Tarawa lost 18 Marines in the bloodiest day of the war as the task force pushed into the city of An Nasiriyah in order to secure it and key bridges over the Euphrates River, thus creating a second route into Baghdad. A wrong turn lead one company of Marines directly into a two-mile stretch of roadway in a residential area known as “Ambush Alley” that was filled with uniformed Iraqi army troops. A second trip through “Ambush Alley” trying to evacuate casualties from the early firefight resulted in the loss of nearly half of all Marines killed that day.