US forces widen control over Baghdad

12.00pm

UPDATE- US forces have battled through the streets of central Baghdad, widening their control over the city and pounding the remaining pockets of Iraqi defenders who offered fierce but sporadic resistance.

The US military, unable to shed light on the fate of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, continued to tighten its grip on the capital. Marines captured the Rashid air base in the southeast, three miles from the centre, and tanks and planes blasted government ministries.

The US military said it did not know whether an airstrike on a building in a wealthy district of Baghdad on Monday had killed Saddam, but added his grasp on the nation of 26 million was fast disintegrating.

"We are sitting in the centre of the city with almost an armour brigade right now, which is extraordinary," Major General Stanley McChrystal told a Pentagon briefing.

"The end game is the end of the regime, and that's much closer than people thought it was," added McChrystal, vice director for operations on the US military's Joint Staff.

He said the US had no "hard battle damage assessment" on who was killed in the airstrike on a residential district aimed at Saddam and his sons, but called it "very effective".

Aircraft, tanks and artillery pounded the nerve centre of Saddam's administration in a thundering raid in central Baghdad that began at dawn, meeting only scattered Iraqi resistance in what appeared to be the final battle for Saddam's capital.

A US tank fired into the Palestine Hotel, where foreign media are based, killing Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 television. Three other Reuters journalists were wounded.

A US general said the tank had fired a single round to silence small arms and grenade fire from the hotel. Journalists said they heard no such firing in the vicinity of the hotel.

The US Defence Department's chief spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said: "Our forces came under fire. They exercised their inherent right to self-defence.

"We have gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties," she told a news briefing. She said she repeatedly warned news media the "war zone is a dangerous place."

Al-Jazeera reporter-producer Tarek Ayoub, a Jordanian, was killed during a US air raid, the Arab satellite television said. Another crew member, Zohair al-Iraqi, was hurt when Jazeera's office near the Information Ministry was hit.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a watchdog group in New York, said it believed military strikes against known media locations violated the Geneva Conventions and demanded US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld launch an investigation.

Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire said US Marines moved street by street through east Baghdad, meeting small arms fire from Iraqi irregulars but greetings of welcome from some residents. "Thank you, Mr Bush," cried one woman in black.

US officers said the Marines were trying to link up with forces from the US 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad on the west side of the Tigris river.

Gen McChrystal said that although the city was effectively isolated, elite Iraqi troops still posed a threat.

"The Special Republican Guard we believe still exists, we believe it is still operating inside Baghdad, we believe that it has great potential for some sharp fights," he said.

The Pentagon's Clarke said: "The (Iraqi) military has lost much of its command and control capability. Most of the opposition is now sporadic attacks from small units."

But Iraq's information minister said Iraqi forces would "tackle and destroy" the invaders. "They are going to surrender or be burned in their tanks," Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told reporters at the Palestine Hotel.

Ambulances ferried casualties to already overwhelmed hospitals. Aid agencies said the hospitals were running low on life-saving medicines as civilian casualties mounted.

US special forces in the north of Iraq were preventing Iraqi troops moving south toward Tikrit or Baghdad, and airstrikes continued on Iraqi military forces in the north.

As the 20-day-old war to topple Saddam neared its climax, US President George W. Bush met his ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair, to discuss the postwar future of Iraq.

"We will move as quickly as possible to place governmental responsibilities under the control of an interim authority composed of Iraqis from both inside and outside the country," Bush said after the summit in Northern Ireland.

"The interim authority will serve until a permanent government can be chosen by the Iraqi people."

Blair said Bush had agreed there would be a "vital role" for the United Nations in Iraqi reconstruction. Bush and Blair hope their vision for after the war will appease widespread international suspicion of US motives in Iraq.

French President Jacques Chirac said the United Nations alone should take charge of rebuilding Iraq after the war.

"The reconstruction ... of Iraq is a matter for the United Nations and it alone," Chirac said in Paris.

Moscow announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder -- key opponents of the war -- would meet in St Petersburg at the weekend.

In Baghdad, talk of reconstruction seemed remote.

Smoke and flames poured from government ministries and buildings pounded by US planes, tanks and artillery.

An Iraqi missile shot down an A-10 Warthog ground attack plane in action near Baghdad international airport, which is held by the Americans. The pilot was rescued.

New tests indicate that substances found at sites in central Iraq in recent days are not chemical weapons agents as first suspected, US military sources said.

A U.S.-led civil administration started work in Iraq when a team of about 20 officials deployed in the southern Iraqi town of Umm Qasr to assess humanitarian needs, a spokesman said.

The mission of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance is to provide humanitarian assistance, begin reconstruction and pave the way for the creation of an interim Iraqi government.

ORHA is headed by retired US Lieutenant General Jay Garner, who will report to US war commander General Tommy Franks.

A British military spokesman said a tribal leader would help form a new leadership in Iraq's southern province after British forces seized Basra, Iraq's second city, on Monday.

The opposition Iraqi National Congress said sheiks, emissaries and tribal leaders from across the south flocked to the town of Nassiriya to greet INC leader Ahmad Chalabi.

But a report by the CIA said Chalabi and other returning exiles would find little support among the Iraqi population.

Syria said it was coordinating with Turkey and Iran to try to prevent the division of their war-ravaged neighbour.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war