Baghdad blasted again, Bush sees no swift victory

4.00pm

BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON - Huge explosions reverberated through central Baghdad today and blasts rocked the city for several hours as missiles targeted an area close to key government buildings including the ministries of information, planning and foreign affairs.

A large fire blazed on the west bank of the River Tigris and US Central Command headquarters in Qatar said air and cruise missile strikes took out a communications centre and command and control facilities.

With US troops slowed by tough resistance at key river crossings and harassed by irregular Iraqi forces hitting their vulnerable, drawn-out supply lines, Bush refused to be drawn into setting a deadline for the end of the war.

"This isn't a matter of timetable, it's a matter of victory," he said after meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday to discuss progress of the war.

"The Iraqi people have got to know ... that they will be liberated and Saddam Hussein will be removed, no matter how long it takes," Bush said.

The United States ordered 100,000 more troops to the theatre and a top general said stiff resistance, unanticipated Iraqi tactics and overstretched supply lines pointed to a longer conflict than planners first forecast.

"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against," Lieutenant General William S Wallace, commander of the US Army's V Corps, told The Washington Post. He said Iraqi irregulars were using guerrilla-style tactics.

Bush has increasingly scaled back popular expectations of a quick war in the face of tough Iraqi fighters, some of them not in uniform.

Iraqi Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed predicted that the decisive battle for Baghdad could be a week to 10 days away, but warned the invaders they would have to conquer the Iraqi capital street by street.

"We set up our (main) defences in Baghdad. It will be no surprise that in five to 10 days they will be able to encircle all our positions in Baghdad. They have the capability to do so," he told a news conference.

"But they have to come into the city eventually ... God willing, Baghdad will be impregnable. We will fight to the end and everywhere. History will record how well Iraqis performed in defence of their capital," Ahmed said.

A battle to take Baghdad house by house and street by street could cause high military and civilian casualties.

The United States and Britain launched the war to oust Saddam and take control of his alleged weapons of mass destruction, none of which have yet been found.

As dawn broke over Baghdad on Friday, the Muslim holy day, Reuters reporter Samia Nakhoul said the explosions continued but sounded farther away, possibly on the outskirts of the capital where units of Saddam's Republican Guard are believed to be dug in.

Earlier, a flurry of blasts was clearly audible during a live interview given by Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf on Iraqi TV.

The minister said his country would not be cowed.

"I think it will become obvious to the world that they (US and British forces) have entered (Iraq) with a kind of stupidity based on a simple idea that 'shock and awe' will make Iraqis kneel," he said.

US troops continued to build up about 80km south of Baghdad, preparing for an anticipated critical battle with Iraqi Republican Guards dug in around Kerbala in the next couple of days.

"Kerbala is shaping up to be a key battle," said Lieutenant Colonel Paul Grosskruger of the 94th Engineers' Battalion, attached to the US 3rd Infantry Division.

A full Iraqi brigade of around 6000 men, including tanks, had taken up position around the city on either side of the Euphrates river, US officers said. Some were from the Medina division of the elite Republican Guard and others were regular army troops.

Three brigades of the US 3rd Infantry Division, totalling some 15,000 men, are surging north towards Baghdad.

US officials said the Pentagon would double its forces on the ground in Iraq to about 200,000 in the next month.

Thousands of additional US forces would flow into Iraq from Kuwait, including the 4th Infantry Division from Texas, 1st Armored Division from Germany and 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Colorado.

Bush and Blair also called on the United Nations to resume its oil-for-food programme to help bring much-needed food, water and medicine to Iraqis.

Diplomats said UN Security Council ambassadors had reached broad agreement to free billions of dollars of Iraq's oil revenues in an effort to avert a humanitarian crisis, although member nations still had to agree the draft deal.

Iraq said the conflict had caused more than 4000 civilian casualties, including more than 350 dead. There was no independent confirmation of these figures.

According to the latest official count, a total of 28 US and 20 British troops have been killed and 18 US and two British soldiers are listed as missing.

In the north, 1000 paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade took over an airfield in Kurdish-controlled territory on Thursday and CNN reported US cargo planes were already using the air strip to bring in equipment.

"This is the beginning of the northern front," a US defence official said. But military experts said this could take weeks and would require a massive airlift of armour.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq