U.S. Marines Hand Over Control of Baghdad to U.S. Army
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: In Iraq's capital city, more changes today. The U.S. Marines have handed over control of Baghdad to the U.S. Army. The Christian minority there are celebrating Easter Sunday and humanitarian aide is trickling into the city now. CNN's Rula Amin is keeping track of the key developments there and she is with us now from Baghdad -- Rula.</s>RULA AMIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, U.S. Marines are out of the Iraqi capitol. U.S. Army troops have replaced them here in Baghdad. Today we also saw the first British troops to arrive in the Iraqi capitol. We don't know much about the numbers; numbers are not released on how many soldiers, American soldiers, are in Baghdad. However, we are seeing less U.S. presence on the streets. The joint patrol between the U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi policemen are still going on but less visible presence. Now, again, on a different note, Iraqi Christians today celebrated the Easter holiday. At the church in the Kradid (ph) neighborhood at St. Joseph's Church, about 300 Chaldean Christians celebrated Easter Sunday. The sermon didn't have much politics but prayers for peace, for those who were wounded, and those who were killed. And Easter comes at a time when some of the Christian community about a quarter of a million of them in Iraq, feel a bit uneasy about certain calls by some Iraqis for the establishment of an Islamic state here in Iraq. The Christian community here has lived in Iraq for hundreds of years, and in the last two decades they lived in a secular state, so some of them are a bit anxious about such calls. Now, on a different note, Iraqi Shias who compromise about 60 percent of the Iraqi population today for the first time in about more than two decades were out on the street in a walk of faith from Baghdad to the two holy cities, Najaf and Karbala. It's the first time that they are able to do so in the open. Usually under the Saddam Hussein rule, people were not permitted to go on for this walk, they were check points along the way, even in Najaf and Karbala where people were allowed to go, it was very much have a security presence and today we've seen thousands of people heading towards Najaf and Karbala. We also know that in the middle of the week we are expecting about two million Shias to attend the ceremonies there -- Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: And Rula, let me ask you about the humanitarian aide I mentioned at the top that it's kind of trickling in now through various parts of Iraq. But there had been a problem of actually transporting some of this humanitarian aide throughout Iraq. Is that still an issue; is that still a hold up? Are -- or now -- are we seeing that the aide is actually getting to people in Iraq?</s>AMIN: No, Fredricka, it's still trickling and there are two major problems. One is to get the aide to Baghdad. Today we saw a convoy of U.N. agencies aide trucks that could not come to Baghdad; they were stopped on the border between Iraq and Jordan because they felt that the road to Baghdad was not secure. And, again, the other problem is even if the aide comes to Iraq the problem of how to distribute this aide. There's a lot of chaos here, a lot of looting, and the U.N. agencies and the different groups who are trying to distribute this aide are trying to find some kind of system where they can distribute it equally and to those who need it -- Fredricka.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, Rula Amin from Baghdad, thank you very much. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com