Explosions near Basra as US and Britain invade Iraq

2.45pm

SOUTHERN IRAQ - US and British armoured columns thrust across the southern Iraqi desert today, after launching an invasion under cover of darkness and an intense artillery barrage.

As huge columns of armoured vehicles rolled across the desert, a Reuters correspondent in northern Kuwait saw huge explosions lighting the night sky in the direction of Iraq's second city of Basra - a likely early target.

"We can see huge explosions and fireballs on the horizon towards Basra," David Fox said from a vantage point overlooking the frontier about 50km south of Basra.

Fox heard the tell-tale sound of heavy US bombers flying overhead. The explosions seemed more intense than during the barrage that launched a US-led invasion on Thursday.

Basra is close to Iraq's big southern oilfields. Military planners are keen to secure the oil to prevent Iraqi forces torching wells, as they did in Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.

The US-led coalition launched the war on Thursday with missile strikes on the capital Baghdad, hitting President Saddam Hussein's family home at dawn and his main palace in the city after nightfall.

Early on Friday, reports from across the country suggested attacks on a range of fronts.

The al-Jazeera television network, in a live report from its report on the scene, said explosions could be heard in the northern city of Mosul in the early hours of Friday morning.

Earlier, a military statement read on Iraqi television spoke of military activity at Akashat and Nukhaib in the western desert, where military experts suggest that US and British special forces may well be operating.

In the southern desert, the armoured columns, advancing with their lights off, rolled at least three abreast. Drivers of the tracked amphibious assault vehicles picked out the road ahead using night-vision goggles.

Soldiers in full battle gear snatched what sleep they could in the back.

US officers said some Marine units had skirmished with Iraqi forces in the south.

But there was little sign of resistance along the way as the columns clattered unopposed across the desert in the wake of the units that spearheaded the invasion, covering ground last visited by American troops 12 years ago.

The moon, clearly visible earlier, was lost in haze. In northern Kuwait, the smell of gunpowder wafted back across the border on a gentle breeze.

Officials in London and Washington said units of the US Marine 1st Expeditionary Force and British Royal Marines had crossed into southern Iraq after nightfall.

But US officials said the troop movements and the fresh wave of night bombing did not represent a massive military attack predicted by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"This is all part of the preparation," one said.

President George W. Bush has pledged to topple Saddam and destroy Iraq's alleged illegal arms programmes. Saddam says that Iraq has no banned chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Iraq said it fired missiles on Thursday at US military bases in northern Kuwait, where the bulk of the more than 120,000-strong invasion force are awaiting the order to advance.

Soldiers scrambled into their gasmasks and chemical protection suits, but there was no sign that chemical weapons had been used.

Iraqi television said four Iraqi soldiers had been killed on Thursday and six wounded. It did not say where or how.

Kuwait's KUNA news agency said US and British forces had seized the Iraqi border town of Umm Qasr, Iraq's biggest commercial port. Iraqi state television denied the report.

State radio said there were no casualties in the Thursday attack on Saddam's family home, which US officials described as an opportunistic hit after intelligence information was thought to have pinpointed his location.

Targets in Baghdad included buildings around the Planning Ministry in the centre of the city and in the southeast. An office of Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz was among those hit.

To the east of the city, there were several explosions in the vicinity of the al-Rashid military base.

About 280,000 US and British troops are in the Gulf region, many of them in Kuwait.

An Iraqi military spokesman said a US troop-carrying helicopter had been shot down. US officials said two helicopters had crash landed along the border. No one on board was hurt and neither was hit by ground fire, they added.

At least one US unit reported coming under Iraqi fire.

"A US unit was targeted by Iraqi mortar fire this evening on the Kuwait-Iraq border," a US military source said. There were no reports of casualties.

An unidentified projectile landed harmlessly in the water near an offshore Kuwaiti oil loading terminal in the Gulf on Thursday evening, residents said.

- REUTERS