US tanks make Baghdad foray, Saddam on television

10.15am

BAGHDAD - The United States said its tanks briefly penetrated in a show of muscle aimed at demoralising the Iraqi leadership, who hit back with defiant calls for redoubled resistance.

Thousands of refugees poured out of the capital, target of 17 consecutive days of bomb and missile attacks, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said several hundred wounded civilians had been taken to city hospitals on Friday alone.

As US-led invaders seeking to oust President Saddam Hussein converged on Baghdad, fierce close-quarters fighting raged in the streets of Kerbala 70 miles to the southeast and Iraqi defenders in the key northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk faced imminent ground attack.

US military officials said 25 Abrams battle tanks and 12 Bradley fighting vehicles launched a broad daylight foray into southern Baghdad's Dawra suburb from the city's airport, seized by US forces on Friday as their biggest prize in the war so far. They said the convoy encountered small arms fire but no major resistance.

"The message ... is to in a way put a bit of an exclamation point on the fact that coalition troops are in the vicinity of Baghdad ... and demonstrate to the Iraqi leadership that they do not have control," said US Major General Victor Renuart.

"It was very clear to the people of Baghdad that coalition forces were in the city. That image is important," he said. But a Reuters correspondent who toured southern and central districts of the city of 5 million people saw no American forces.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf read a message he said was from Saddam, acknowledging "victories" for the invaders but urging the armed forces and ordinary citizens to step up their defence.

"The criminals will be humiliated," the message said. "You must inflict more wounds on this enemy and fight it and deprive it of the victories it has achieved ... you must rattle their joints and terrify them and speedily defeat them in and around Baghdad."

Iraqi domestic television on Saturday (Sunday NZT) showed footage of Saddam meeting with his two sons Qusay and Uday, top aides and military commanders. It was impossible to say when or where the tape was made.

The United States and Britain launched their war on March 20 with air raids intended to kill Saddam and his sons, leading to feverish speculation, particularly in the United States, over whether he is still alive. Iraqi television on Friday broadcast what it said were pictures of him touring bomb-damaged streets of Baghdad.

The Iraqi information minister reported Baghdad was still firmly under Iraqi control, but Maj. Gen. Renuart said US troops could now move into Baghdad as and when they chose. "This fight is far from over," Renuart added.

The US Air Force said dozens of fighters and bombers were stacked up over Baghdad to support the ground troops around the capital, ready to launch a range of precision bombs and rockets day and night in an aerial form of house-to-house combat.

Two large explosions rocked the centre of Baghdad just after midnight and heavy artillery shook the southwestern fringes of the city early on Sunday in the direction of the airport, a Reuters witness said.

In Kerbala, US troops fought street-to-street with Iraqi paramilitaries in a fierce assault aimed at protecting supply lines of US forces moving into Baghdad.

US officers said the American troops had killed about 75 Fedayeen paramilitaries and said six or seven US soldiers had been wounded in the battle.

"It's freaky in there. Lots of bullets flying around. It's pretty scary," said one young US soldier who was evacuated after being hit by fragments from a hand grenade.

In the north, US forces and Kurdish militia fighters pushed closer to the oil centres of Mosul and Kirkuk as US planes pounded Iraqi fighters defending both cities.

A Reuters team passed one 20-vehicle convoy carrying around 100 US soldiers about three miles from the village of Kalak, which until Thursday formed the frontline between the Kurdish-ruled zone and the Iraqi army defending Mosul.

Kurdish fighters also said they had captured the town of Domiz, home to an Iraqi military base on the road to Mosul, after a firefight with defending Iraqi troops.

President Bush, who launched the war to rid Iraq of the chemical and biological weapons which he says it has, said on Saturday (Sunday NZT) Iraqi forces were in their "final days."

US forces have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction but US Marines were digging up a suspected chemical weapons hiding place at a school in central Iraq on Saturday (Sunday NZT). Iraq denies having weapons of mass destruction.

A US official said Washington planned to install the first stages of a civil administration to run post-war Iraq in the southern port of Umm Qasr within days.

Members of the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance are scheduled to start operating in the port as early as Tuesday, the official said.

Aides said Bush was monitoring battlefield developments over the weekend from the Camp David presidential retreat, where he was briefed by his war council on Saturday (Sunday NZT).

Between war updates, the White House said Bush planned to exercise and watch college basketball on television. Bush also spoke by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and with Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, a close ally.

British troops in southern Iraq found the desiccated remains of as many as 200 people in an abandoned warehouse along with catalogues of grisly photographs of what could be torture victims.

It was not immediately clear how old the remains were but initial indications suggested the people might have died several years ago.


- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war