Fresh raids rock Baghdad

11.40pm

BAGHDAD - Fresh explosions rocked the Iraqi capital Baghdad today as planes dropped a string of bombs on targets across the city.

The city's air raid sirens gave no notice of the afternoon attack and there was no Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, which was fierce during overnight US air and missile strikes on the city.

"We can hear the sound of warplanes. I have heard six explosions. They started on the outskirts and gradually moved in toward the center," Reuters correspondent Khaled Oweis said.

"There were no air raid sirens," he said, adding that he could hear no Iraqi anti-aircraft fire.

Oweis said that one of the blasts came from the direction of al-Doura, an area in the east of the city with a power station and a refinery.

He said that with two other daylight raids on the city earlier in the day, air raid sirens only sounded after the attacks.

Meanwhile US Marines faced pockets of Iraqi resistance in the strategic Iraqi port of Umm Qasr today, a day after Washington said it had won control.

The Marines also said that US and British forces had taken between 400 and 450 Iraqi prisoners in fighting around Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep-water port, and the nearby Faw peninsula which controls access from the Gulf to Iraq's tiny coast.

"We did meet some resistance, it's probably not going as quick as we would have liked," Colonel Thomas Waldhauser, Commanding Officer of the 15th Marine expeditionary unit, told reporters in Umm Qasr.

"There is still some slight resistance within the town," he said, more than a day after starting an assault on the port.

He said the Marines hoped to secure Umm Qasr later today. One US Marine died in the fighting for the port. Waldhauser said he had no idea of Iraqi casualties.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington on Friday that US and British forces had captured Umm Qasr. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf dismissed Rumsfeld's statement as "illusions and lies".

Reuters reporter Adrian Croft, in Umm Qasr, said that he heard a burst of machinegun fire and the sound of artillery apparently fired at the town.

US Marines also set up a mortar but did not fire. Waldhauser said defenders had had small arms, rifles, mortars, rocket propelled grenades and some artillery.

Waldhauser said that some of the defenders were dressed in civilian clothes and that some had been brought in at the last minute to resist the US-led invasion of Iraq aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that started on Thursday.

"At times military units start to change into civilian clothes. They move and claim they are not in the military," he said. He also said they were also hiding among civilians.

Croft also saw British forces delivering about 50 prisoners of war to a small beach at Umm Qasr in 10 rubber dinghies. Wearing plastic handcuffs, they were transferred to a warehouse with other prisoners.

"Two had to be brought in on stretchers," Croft said. "Two others were limping and needed help. Some of them had no shoes."

Waldhauser said the Marines would start trying to check piers and cranes in the port for booby traps. US-led forces want to use the port for humanitarian.

"Our ambition is to open the port and get humanitarian aid into the people of southern Iraq as quickly as possible," Group Captain Al Lockwood, main spokesman for British forces at command headquarters in Qatar, told Reuters.

British Brigadier Jim Dutton, commander of Third Commando Brigade of the British Royal Marines, reiterated that his forces had captured the southern end of the Faw peninsula.

"At the moment we are secure at the bottom end (of the peninsula)...The plan is eventually to move forward to the southern edge of (the nearby port city of) Basra. We started doing that now, cleaning up the peninsula," he said.


In another development Iraq said today 250 civilians had been wounded in bombing of Baghdad and denied US and British claims of successes in their invasion of the country.


At a news conference after a night of heavy bombing of the Iraqi capital, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf denied British and American troops had taken the key southern port of Umm Qasr or two air bases in the western desert.

"They have not occupied anything. This is part of their silly psychological propaganda they are launching in order to mislead the media and public opinion," he said.

Sahaf said that during last night's Baghdad raids alone, the "international gang of criminal bastards" wounded 207 civilians. The remaining casualties were caused by earlier raids.

"Until an hour ago, the total number of civilian injuries -- men, women and children -- was 207 and they are all in five Baghdad hospitals," he said.

"US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that they attacked military installations. We will show you the 207 military positions they hit lying in the hospitals."

Peppering his comments with fiery rhetoric and insults against the United States and Britain, the minister said Iraqi forces had destroyed five enemy tanks and inflicted casualties on the invading force.

He denied they had captured the strategic Faw peninsula and its vital oil installations.

"They failed to break our defences in Umm Qasr. Our forces are still standing and until now the battles are fierce and we've inflicted large casualties on them," he said.

"In Faw, the British lied. Our forces are still there, and fighting is fierce."
Sahaf also denied reports that Iraqi forces had been taken prisoners.

"These losers just want anything, anything to show that they have taken prisoners, but they also kidnapped civilians in Faw, these mercenaries and cowards.
"
"They just want to tell the world, the tax payers, their people, that they are succeeding but they are lying."

"They are a gang of war criminals," he said of the US and British forces, making inroads into Iraq.

"They are not normal humans, they are criminals by nature and by preparation.

An Iraqi military spokesman denied US reports that the commander, officers and soldiers of Iraq's 51st army division surrendered to US Marines in southern Iraq.

Sahaf made his remarks a few hours after the United States and Britain unleashed a fearsome blitz on Baghdad.

He said Iraqi anti-aircraft defences were able to shoot down several of the missiles launched against Baghdad on Friday.

"Tens of missiles were shot down by Iraqi defences and we are in the process of counting them," he added.

The Ministry of Information took reporters to hospitals in Baghdad to show them the wounded.

It also invited journalists to visit Tikrit, the hometown of President Saddam Hussein, 170 km north of Baghdad.



- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq