March 20, 2003

2003 invasion of Iraq

Opening strikes and the ground invasion of Iraq begin

The war opened with two stealth jets dropping four 2,000-pound bombs on a bunker that did not exist.

About 5:30 a.m. Baghdad time, 20 March 2003

On 20 March 2003, two U.S. F-117 stealth aircraft and cruise missiles attacked the Dora Farms compound in southern Baghdad at about 5:30 a.m. local time, acting on intelligence — later shown to be wrong — that Saddam Hussein and senior leaders were there. Each F-117 dropped two 2,000-pound bombs, and Human Rights Watch's reconstruction counts up to 40 Tomahawks.

The strike did not kill Saddam and did not hit any actual underground command bunker. Reported civilian casualties at Dora Farms were one person killed and 14 wounded, including nine women and a child.

Not yet the air campaign

This was a limited, opportunistic leadership strike rather than the broad aerial offensive popularly called "shock and awe." The Iraq Inquiry records the main strategic air campaign as scheduled for 21 March.

President George W. Bush announced at 10:16 p.m. Eastern time on 19 March that U.S. and coalition forces had begun military operations; dawn had already come to Baghdad on 20 March. The two dates are a time-zone difference, not two separate beginnings.

Across the border that night

Iraqi forces fired missiles toward coalition positions in Kuwait. Patriot missiles intercepted incoming weapons, and the Defense Department reported no casualties from those attacks.

Coalition ground forces moved across the Kuwait–Iraq border during the evening and night of 20–21 March, with Regimental Combat Team 5 crossing at 20:42 local time. Bush said more than 35 countries were providing forms of coalition support — bases, intelligence, logistics and overflight rights among them, not invasion troops from each.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 10 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The operation is dated March 19 in many U.S. records because the opening attack and Bush’s announcement occurred before midnight in Washington. In Baghdad it was early March 20; the Iraq Inquiry accordingly describes the invasion as beginning on the night of March 19–20.
Sources differ by several minutes on the exact Baghdad time of the first impacts, commonly giving approximately 5:30–5:45 a.m. This does not affect the local date.