Explosions continue to shake Baghdad

BAGHDAD - Explosions thudded south and east of Baghdad on Sunday (local time) after a night of sustained US strikes on the Iraqi capital battered a presidential palace and a main training site for Fedayeen paramilitary forces.

Air raid sirens sounded in the morning as one of the fiercest air assaults of the 11-day-old war stretched into a second day.

No warplanes or explosions were heard in central Baghdad but a rumble of at least 13 explosions came from south of the city and two, closer to the capital, to the east.

"The last one shook the hotel. It was a very big one," said Reuters correspondent Hassan Hafidh.

US President George Bush said today that US-led troops are less than 50 miles south of the capital.

Smoke from blazing oil-filled trenches lay low over the south and east of the city on Sunday morning. The black smoke is meant to create a smokescreen to try to throw missiles and bombs off course.

Telephone lines in Baghdad were badly disrupted after repeated strikes on telephone exchanges.

In Washington, the US military said that it bombed the main training site for Iraqi Fedayeen paramilitary forces in eastern Baghdad, a presidential palace, an intelligence complex and surface-to-air missile sites in the overnight strikes.

"The strike enhances the security of coalition air forces conducting missions over the capital city of Baghdad," the US military's Combined Forces Air Component Command said.

Earlier on Sunday, four deafening explosions shook central Baghdad.

Reuters television journalists said the bombing in central Baghdad targeted a complex inside a presidential palace that was used by President Saddam Hussein's powerful son Qusay.

The complex had already been hit by several missiles in raids in the first days of the war.

In an earlier raid before midnight, about 10 explosions hit the city center and another 20 or so boomed on the outskirts, especially to the northwest.

Iraq said that 62 people died and 49 were wounded in a devastating explosion in a crowded Baghdad market on Friday which it blamed on a US attack. The United States is checking whether its forces are responsible.

Explosions also rocked Mosul in north Iraq and Basra in the south overnight, according to correspondents for al-Jazeera television in the cities.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war