US-led forces sweep into Southern Iraq

6pm

BAGHDAD - US and British armoured forces penetrated deeper into Iraq almost unopposed today and the United States said it still hoped to topple Saddam Hussein without all the force and fury of an all-out war.

US forces rolled across the desert of southern Iraq, racing north toward Baghdad past the flames and smoke of burning oil fields, said Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire.

He said there were no signs of resistance along the way.

"There was no gunfire. They had a clear path," said Maguire, traveling with the 1st Marine Regiment with a long column of military vehicles ahead of them.

Live television footage showed US tank units racing across the desert with little to no resistance. Reuters reporters said that convoys of tanks, armoured assault vehicles, Humvees, trucks and artillery made steady progress as they ploughed into Iraq.

US Marines invading Iraq were halted just 200 metres into the country by Iraqi anti-tank missiles and small-arms fire as American and British forces headed for Baghdad, a Reuters correspondent with the US forces said.

"There is quite a big gun fight going on," said correspondent Adrian Croft. "We've baled out of our truck. The US forces have called in British artillery fire which is raining down on the Iraqi positions."

He said the Iraqis had fired Soviet-designed anti-tank weapons known to Nato forces as Sagger missiles. He did not know if the Marines had suffered any casualties and could not say exactly where the Marines had crossed into Iraq.

"On our way in we passed a British artillery unit pounding Iraq, turning the sky black with smoke and dust."

In Washington, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States still hoped a full-scale war to oust Saddam from power and rid Iraq of suspected weapons of mass destruction could be averted.

"Pressure is continuing on the Iraqi regime. And it will not be there in the period ahead. And we still hope that it is possible that they will not be there without the full force and fury of a war," Rumsfeld said, as the first ground forces swept across the Iraq-Kuwait border.

He added: "There are communications in every conceivable mode and method, public and private, to the Iraqi forces that they can act with honour and turn over their weapons and walk away from them and they will not be hurt."

Reuters video: Iraqi forces surrender

About 280,000 US and British troops are in the Gulf region, many of them in Kuwait. Australia has 2,000 special forces involved.

The attacks marked the first use of a new US strategic doctrine of pre-emptively attacking any country seen to pose a threat.

As US and British troops crossed into Iraq, explosions and fireballs were seen in the direction of Basra, Iraq's second city.

Reuters correspondent David Fox said he believed the explosions were a mix of artillery fire and bombings from warplanes. Fox was watching from a point overlooking the Iraq-Kuwait border about 50km south of Basra, which is close to Iraq's big southern oil fields.

Military planners are keen to secure and prevent Iraqi forces from torching wells, as they did in Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

Meanwhile, British troops secured a position on the Faw peninsula in southern Iraq, a strategic point for oil tanker traffic at the head of the Gulf, a British correspondent said in a pooled dispatch.

A reporter for Al Jazeera television said the northern Iraqi city of Mosul had been rocked by explosions as well.

US and British troops sustained their first casualties of the operation when a CH-46E helicopter carrying 16 people crashed. The crash killed 12 British and 4 US troops, a US military spokesman said.

While the US-led forces sped across Iraq's southern desert, it was quiet in Baghdad. The sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayers rang out in gray dawn of the Muslim holy day.

It was in sharp contrast to earlier today, when the United States and Britain blasted one of Saddam Hussein's palaces in Baghdad. Witnesses in the Iraqi capital reported several explosions near government buildings after cruise missiles swooped down, shaking the city with massive blasts. There was relatively little Iraqi anti-aircraft fire.

One of the targets struck was Saddam's vast Baghdad palace complex on the banks of the Tigris River. Another housed an office of Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz.

The action was the second round of US attacks after the Iraqi president yesterday defied an ultimatum from President Bush to leave the country.

The previous raid at dawn targeted Saddam. He appeared on Iraqi television a few hours later, although it was not clear if the image was live or recorded.

The Washington Post reported today that Saddam, possibly with one or both of his sons, was inside a Baghdad compound when it was struck by a barrage of bombs and cruise missiles.

In an article quoting unnamed senior Bush administration officials, the Post reported that intelligence analysts were not certain whether the Iraqi leader was killed or injured, or whether he escaped the attack.

Back in the United States, tens of thousands of people marched in cities across the country to protest against the war, which the United States and Britain began without UN Security Council agreement.

Police arrested more than 1,000 people in San Francisco - the most taken into custody on a single day in the city in decades.

More than 100,000 protested in Germany. In London, thousands of British anti-war campaigners blocked roads and scuffled with police. More than 10,000 people, mostly students, surged through Paris chanting anti-war slogans and some burned the US flag.

- REUTERS