US tanks surge into Baghdad, Iraqis fight back

BAGHDAD - US troops stormed into the heart of Baghdad on Monday, grabbing two of President Saddam Hussein's palace compounds but losing four dead on the fringes of the capital as Iraqi forces fought back fiercely.

The US military described the assault as a show of force, and not the final attack to take the sprawling city of five million, key prize in a 19-day-old war to oust Saddam.

"The commanders on the ground will make the decisions on what parts of Baghdad they wish to retain control of," US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a news conference.

Speaking at war command headquarters in Qatar, he said the attack showed US forces could strike at will.

An armored column blasted into central Baghdad with relative ease, but two US Marines were killed and three wounded as they battled for two river bridges in the east.

Marines said their comrades had died in "friendly fire" when an artillery shell fired by their own side fell short.

The Marines later crossed the Diyala river even though the Iraqis had damaged the bridges to slow them up. Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire saw US tanks and armored vehicles on the western bank pounding positions of Iraq's elite Special Republican Guard.

Two US soldiers and two journalists were killed and 15 people wounded in an Iraqi attack on a communications center in the southern outskirts of Baghdad, military sources said.

Iraq said the invaders were "committing suicide" at the gates of the capital.

Heavy fighting raged in the afternoon and Iraqi forces were pouring artillery shells into a presidential complex on the west bank of the Tigris river that US forces had seized.

"The Iraqis are definitely fighting back," said Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul from a central vantage point.

A Reuters photographer said shells, apparently American, were landing in the gardens of the luxury Rashid hotel and around the Information Ministry.

US Lt. Col. Pete Bayer told Reuters earlier: "We have seized the main presidential palace in downtown Baghdad... There are two palaces down there and we are in both of them."

There was no word on Saddam's whereabouts. He was unlikely to be anywhere near his official palaces, which have been hit repeatedly in almost three weeks of air strikes.

British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said he was unsure of the location of Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay.

But he said there were "strong indications" that Ali Hassan al-Majid, or "Chemical Ali," Saddam's cousin and military commander in southern Iraq, was dead. Majid earned his nickname for ordering poison gas attacks on Kurds in the late 1980s.

A US officer said biological and chemical weapons experts had come across a possible storage site for such arms -- which Iraq denies possessing -- south of the central town of Hindiya.

"Our detectors have indicated something," said Major Ros Coffman, a public affairs officer with the US 3rd Infantry.

"This is an initial report, but it could be a smoking gun," Coffman told Reuters correspondent Luke Baker. "It is not as if there is a cloud of gas hanging everywhere endangering soldiers lives. We're talking about a facility."

In the south, British and US troops walked unopposed almost to the center of Basra, Iraq's southern city, for the first time, Reuters correspondent Rosalind Russell reported.

Hoon said British forces had moved to the heart of Basra and were there to stay. A British spokesman said earlier there was still some resistance in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim city.

Iraqi defence

In Baghdad, a Reuters reporter said Iraqi forces were blocking many Tigris bridges. Republican Guards were defending key ministries with rocket-propelled grenades.

Ambulances hurtled through the streets, but there was no immediate word on civilian casualties. Aid workers said on Sunday hospitals in Baghdad were already overwhelmed.

A US military spokesman said the aim of the attack was not to hold territory. "The goal of this is not to take ground. This is an armored raid through the city," Captain Frank Thorp said.

"We're expecting to see continuing fighting with Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard as military movements continue," he said, referring to Saddam's best units.

"We should stay calm. There's a lot of tough battles ahead."

Thorp said US forces had set up checkpoints on all major arteries into Baghdad to stop Iraqi military movements. Civilians would be allowed to come and go freely.

World financial markets sensed the endgame of the Iraq war, sending European shares and the dollar jumping and signaling a roaring start to Wall Street. Prices of safe-haven bonds tumbled and gold lost $6 an ounce. Oil prices hit a four-month low.

Some military analysts said they believed the fall of Baghdad was imminent, but others voiced caution.

"The battle in Baghdad and the hit-and-run strategy we are seeing now does not mean that the Iraqi military has been completely defeated," Frank Umbach, security and defence analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Reuters.

"I see the fighting going on for a number of weeks."

Denying what was visible to many Baghdad residents as well as television viewers around the world, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said there had been no big US raid.

"Baghdad is safe," he told reporters at the Palestine hotel as a dense yellow sandstorm swept over the city, mingling with smoke from oil fires lit to obstruct the invaders.

US columns had been "slaughtered," Sahaf said. "The battle is still going on. Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad...Don't believe those liars."

He was speaking within sight of US tanks on the other side of the Tigris river.

Bayer told Baker at Baghdad international airport that 65 tanks and 40 Bradley fighting vehicles took part in the attack.

Iraqi television stayed on air, broadcasting old footage of Saddam. In what a possible sign of a breakdown in military communications, it also rebroadcast a message aired on Sunday urging Iraqis to join any military unit they could find.

With the war approaching a climax, the issue of how Iraq will be run in a post-Saddam era loomed increasingly large.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, due to meet President Bush in Northern Ireland later on Monday, was expected to try to persuade his US ally to give the United Nations a bigger role in running Iraq after the war.

Success for Blair could help placate other European leaders who oppose the war. But US officials have ruled out a key political mission for the UN, saying Washington and its allies earned the right to call the shots by giving "life and blood."

Herald Feature: Iraq war