Saddam says victory is near in southern Iraq

9pm

UPDATED REPORT - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said in a national address on state television on Monday that Iraqi forces had inflicted serious losses on US-led forces and praised commanders fighting specific battles with the invaders.

Wearing military uniform and reading his address from behind a podium, Saddam praised the Iraqi commander at Umm Qasr, where US-led tanks, ground-attack jets, artillery and infantry have failed to dislodge more than 120 Iraqi Republican Guards.

He also said "victory is very near" in Basra, southern Iraq, which US and British tank units were still trying to secure. He called on defenders of Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul to hold firm, saying "despicable enemies would be defeated".

It was not clear whether the 20-minute speech was recorded or live but the fact that Saddam mentioned successes in Umm Qasr suggested it had been made recently.

Saddam hailed the Iraqi military on the fifth-day of a US-led invasion to overthrow him.

"We made a lot of sacrifices to avert war," Saddam said, praising the "valiant" contribution of the Iraqi military in resisting a US and British war against Iraq that began on Thursday.

He said the invasion forces were "trapped" by heroic Iraqi resistance.

Reuters correspondents in Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East said they were confident that the man appearing on live television was Saddam. The Iraqi leader has a handful of lookalikes who sometimes stand in for him.

Speculation has abounded about Saddam's fate since the war started with air strikes on Baghdad intended to kill him. Some reports said he was dead, others that he was so badly wounded he had to receive a blood transfusion.

Within three hours of the first US-led attack on Baghdad on Thursday, a tired-looking Saddam appeared on television, in a military uniform, urging his people to fight. But the CIA says it could have been pre-recorded - even though he referred in the address to the start of the raid at dawn.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said late on Sunday that Saddam was alive and well. "Mr Saddam Hussein is very well, in good condition and he is leading our people and our fight against this colonial aggression," he said in Cairo on the eve of an Arab foreign ministers' meeting.

Iraq put five US captives on television on Sunday and showed up to eight bloodied corpses of what it said were US soldiers killed in fighting near the southern town of Nassiriya.

Nassiriya, where two strategic bridges span the Euphrates River, has seen the sharpest fighting so far. Iraqis were also resisting in the southern city of Basra and the deep-water port of Umm Qasr - vital for any resumption of food imports.

"The whole regiment we're travelling with is just stuck here," said Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire, with the Marines First Regiment south of Nassiriya. "They need those bridges."

US warplanes again pummelled Baghdad. Several huge blasts rocked the city centre before dawn with no warning from air raid sirens and no anti-aircraft fire. The explosions were among the biggest since US and British air strikes began on Thursday.

In the north, two more waves of air bombardments struck in or around the city of Mosul, said Reuters correspondent Jon Hemming, watching from Kurdish-held territory.

US President George W Bush said the war, which reached the 100-hour mark - the entire duration of the 1991 ground war that drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait -- at 0530 GMT on Monday, had only just started.

"We're on course and we're making good progress," Bush said in Washington. "This is just the beginning of a tough fight."

Financial markets began to take account of a longer battle to depose Saddam and disarm Iraq than had been expected. Oil prices jumped off four-month lows and the dollar eased.

A US military spokesman cancelled a planned media trip to Iraq's Rumaila oil field on Monday, saying the area was unsafe.

US Apache helicopters attacked suspected Republican Guard positions around the city of Najaf, just 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, before dawn, CNN reported.

Iraqi television on Sunday showed eight bloodied American corpses and five US soldiers, including a wounded woman, captured in fighting near Nassiriya. Questioned by a TV reporter, they identified themselves and named their home states.

There was no word from US officials on a report by Fox News and the Jerusalem Post that US forces had found a possible chemical weapons factory near the city of Najaf, 160km south of Baghdad, on Sunday.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier that no banned weapons had yet been found by US and British forces in Iraq. Baghdad denies it has any chemical or biological weapons.

On Sunday, US Army General John Abizaid said 12 US soldiers were missing in the Nassiriya area and up to nine had been killed. Some news organisations put the death toll as high as 16. A number of other Americans were wounded.

"It's the toughest day of resistance that we've had thus far. We understand that there may be other tough days ahead of us but the outcome is still certain," Abizaid told a news conference at Central Command headquarters in Qatar.

Abizaid said American resolve would not be weakened by what he called the "disgusting" film of the US prisoners.

Among other setbacks, Britain said on Monday two soldiers were missing after they came under attack in southern Iraq.

On Sunday, one US soldier was killed and 15 wounded in a grenade attack on a command post in Kuwait by a Muslim US serviceman said to be angry at the war. The US military identified him as Army Sergeant Asan Akbar.

A British Tornado jet was accidentally brought down by a US Patriot missile. Both crew men were killed.

Two US Marines were killed in separate accidents in Iraq, the Pentagon announced early on Monday.

British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said on Sunday Iraqi resistance to the US-led invasion was patchy. "Some parts of their regular army appear to be surrendering. Other parts of what we might describe as their secret and security services are obviously putting up a fight," he said.

US Marines ran into a tough fight after they thought they had secured two bridges across the Euphrates river at Nassiriya.

After two days of racing unopposed across the desert, the Marines were hit by a surprise counterattack by the Saddam Fedayeen militia at Nassiriya. They held up the advance for a full day with guerrilla tactics, US officers said.

Saddam's Baath party militiamen were roaming the southern city of Basra, US officers said.

The commander of the Iraqi 51st division, which US officials said on Friday had surrendered, told Al-Jazeera television he and his troops were fighting on in Basra.

"There is fighting...on the streets. It is terrible," said Hussein, a 24-year-old engineer who fled the city.

Also worrying for US and British forces, who say they are on a mission to liberate Iraqis from Saddam despite widespread international criticism, was the mixed reception they received in the south, where the Shi'ite majority has been repressed.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq