Iraqi TV announces night travel ban out of Baghdad

7pm

BAGHDAD - Iraqi television said authorities would impose a travel ban out of Baghdad from 6pm (2am NZT) to 6am (2pm NZT) beginning tonight as US forces closed in on the Iraqi capital.

"It has been decided that there will be a ban on the movement of vehicles and people from and into the capital Baghdad between 6pm and 6am until further notice," an announcer said on state television.

Until the announcement of the ban, there had been a fair number of people and cars moving out of Baghdad, even at night.

Worn out by days of bombing, thousands of Iraqi civilians fled Baghdad yesterday, trudging to relative safety behind US military lines or else heading north away from the relentless American advance.

Men, women and children walked for hours through the fierce heat of an early summer's day, carrying at most the odd plastic bag, blankets or tin kettle between them.

Just before the announcement of the travel ban, Reuters correspondents in the centre of Baghdad heard heavy artillery echoing from the western outskirts of the city.

"There was lots of rumbling. We heard it echoing across the capital," correspondent Samia Nakhoul said.

The explosions rocked Baghdad as US forces ranged around the Iraqi capital sought to demonstrate their dominance of the war to oust President Saddam Hussein.

The explosions, accompanied by the roar of warplanes over the centre of the city, echoed from the southwest, where US forces consolidated their grip on the international airport.

After seizing the airport on Friday, the biggest prize for the US-led invaders in the 18-day-old war so far, US forces sent a column of armour on a brief foray into the city yesterday in a show of muscle intended to intimidate the Iraqi leadership.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf issued a defiant response, reading a message he said was from Saddam that acknowledged "victories" for the invaders but urged the armed forces and ordinary citizens of Iraq 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 yesterday 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 appeared increasingly confident of its ability to crush remaining resistance following a rapid advance from Kuwait that has brought its forces to the gates of Baghdad in just over two weeks.

"The preponderance of the Republican Guard divisions outside of Baghdad are now dead," US Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Moseley said.

"I find it interesting when folks say we're softening them up. We're not softening them up, we're killing them."

Moseley said dozens of air force fighters and bombers were stacked up over Baghdad to support the ground troops, ready to launch a range of precision bombs and rockets day and night in an aerial form of house-to-house combat.

US President George W Bush, who launched the war saying he wanted to rid Iraq of chemical and biological weapons, said Iraqi forces were in their "final days."

Bush made no reference to tough fighting ahead as he has in previous speeches, when US forces faced stiffer-than-expected resistance and critics raised questions about the US war plan.

Aides said Bush was monitoring battlefield developments over the weekend from the Camp David presidential retreat, where he was briefed by his war council yesterday.

Between war updates, the White House said Bush planned to exercise and watch college basketball on television.

Thousands of refugees poured out of Baghdad, where the International Committee of the Red Cross said several hundred wounded civilians had been taken to hospitals on Friday alone.

Men, women and children walked for hours through the fierce heat of early summer, carrying at most the odd plastic bag, blanket or tin kettle between them.

US Major General Victor Renuart said the aim of the armoured incursion yesterday was to "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.

"It was very clear to the people of Baghdad that coalition forces were in the city. That image is important," he said.

However, a Reuters correspondent who toured southern and central districts of the city of 5 million people saw no American forces.

The Iraqi information minister reported Baghdad was still firmly under Iraqi control, but Renuart said US troops could now move into Baghdad as and when they chose.

"This fight is far from over," he added.

In Kerbala, 110km southeast of Baghdad, US troops fought street-to-street with Iraqi paramilitaries in a fierce assault aimed at protecting supply lines.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war