US targets Saddam in bombing raid

3.00pm

WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein and his two sons were targeted in a bomb attack by US warplanes on Monday after military intelligence pinpointed their location in Baghdad, a US official said.

US aircraft bombed a building in a residential neighbourhood where the Iraqi leader and his sons Uday and Qusay were believed to be meeting with other members of the Iraqi leadership, officials said.

"There was intelligence that came in this morning which suggested that there was a gathering of Iraqi intelligence officials and possibly including Saddam and both of his sons in a residential district of Baghdad," the official told Reuters.

There was no confirmation that Saddam or his sons were killed or wounded in the strike, the official said, but the building was destroyed and anyone inside was not likely to have survived.

"It's a hole in the ground," the official said.

The fate of Saddam and those of his sons has been the subject of intense speculation since they were targeted in an initial US strike in the early hours of March 20 Iraqi time on a residential compound on the outskirts of Baghdad.

If the Iraqi leader and his sons are confirmed killed it would hasten the end of the war, with remaining Iraqi troops expected to capitulate without their leaders.

Earlier on Monday, a US armored force punched into the heart of Baghdad and gained a stronghold in one of Saddam's palaces, striking a powerful military and psychological blow.

Overnight, Iraqi soldiers who had been scattered by the US onslaught on the capital, apparently attacked the US troops. A Reuters correspondent reported hearing machine-gun fire and several explosions from the palace compound.

"It seems as if Iraqi forces are bombarding the compound. I saw flashes as whatever it was they were firing landed," said Reuters correspondent Khaled Yacoub Oweis from a hotel across the Tigris river.

"It seems the Iraqis are trying to storm the palace from the western side," he said.

The US forces appeared to reply by firing what looked like about a dozen rockets in quick succession from within the large compound toward the northwest of the city.

The US military said the assault on central Baghdad by over 100 tanks and armored vehicles was a show of force, designed to demonstrate that troops could enter the capital at will, rather than a final attack on the city of 5 million.

US networks showed pictures of US troops lounging around inside the palace and lingered on images of the once-sumptuous interiors.

In southern Iraq, British paratroopers walked unopposed into the centre of Iraq's second city of Basra on Monday, where residents warmly welcomed them.

About 700 British soldiers walked past the bodies of Iraqi militiamen and entered the city in the early afternoon in single-file columns.

Not a shot was fired as men, women and children came out onto the road, some to greet the new occupiers. Others begged the troops for water.

US troops found suspected chemical weapons in a central Iraqi town but an officer later suggested they might turn out to be pesticides rather than banned weapons and tests had yet to verify the contents of the suspicious oil drums.

The United States and Britain launched the war on Iraq on March 20 to oust Saddam and rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, which Baghdad denied possessing.

Maj. Michael Hamlet of the US 101st Airborne Division told Reuters that initial investigations of 14 barrels found at a military training camp on Sunday revealed levels of nerve agents sarin and tabun and the blister agent lewisite.

But Gen. Benjamin Freakly, also of the 101st Airborne, said later that tests on substances at the camp and a separate agricultural site, both in the town of Albu Mahawish, could show they had a less sinister purpose.

"This could be either some kind of pesticide," Freakly told CNN. "On the other hand it could be a chemical agent -- not weaponized, a liquid agent that is in drums."

British military officials believe they found the body of Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and a member of his close entourage known as "Chemical Ali," in the rubble of a home destroyed during an air raid on Basra on Saturday.

US Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the invasion force, paid a quick visit to southern Iraq, to visit British commanders in charge of the battle for Basra and to see US forces at Najaf.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, accompanying President Bush to Belfast where he met British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said Washington would send a team to Iraq this week to begin looking at what is needed to set up an interim Iraqi authority.

"Neither side underestimates the difficulties still to be faced ... It is dangerous to take victory for granted in any way," said a Blair spokesman after the two leaders caught up over a walk in the grounds of Hillsborough Castle.

Small arms fire and explosions echoed through the southern city of Nassiriya after dark. US forces said it was in-fighting among Iraqis.

It was not known whether the fighting was linked with the reported arrival in Nassiriya of several hundred anti-Saddam Iraqi opposition fighters headed by Ahmad Chalabi, the best-known leader of the Iraqi National Congress. The fighters planned to parade through the town on Tuesday.

US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said Iraqi resistance was sporadic and not coherent.

Two Marines were killed and three wounded, apparently by friendly fire, in a fierce battle for two river bridges east of Baghdad. Two more US soldiers and two journalists were killed and 15 people wounded in an Iraqi attack on a communications centre in the southern outskirts of Baghdad.

In Baghdad, hospitals battled with a constant stream of civilian dead and injured. Doctors said they were running short of anaesthetics and medical equipment.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war