- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Fresh
explosions shook the Iraqi capital Friday night and Arabic-language television
stations said more than 50 Iraqis had been killed in what they said was
an air raid on a marketplace in the city.
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- Al-Jazeera's correspondent said 51 Iraqis had been killed
and 49 wounded in the market in the city's Shula neighborhood.
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- "An Iraqi official told us that the search is still
going on for those trapped under the rubble," he said and showed pictures
of bodies, including those of two children.
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- Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television reported 52 dead and
showed pictures of injured at a hospital. Iraqi government officials were
not immediately available for comment.
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- Abu Dhabi television said U.S. cruise missiles may have
hit the market and showed a gaping hole on one street and damaged cars.
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- An Iraqi woman was shown on Jazeera hitting herself in
the face repeatedly as she stared through a window at a wounded young man
lying in a hospital bed. A group of men shouted "There is no God but
God" as they stood beside an ambulance.
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- Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki said a series of blasts
hit the city after nightfall after U.S. and British bombs and missiles
had pounded the capital in the heaviest day of raids since the war began
nine days ago.
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- Earlier Friday, the Muslim holy day, residents said eight
people died in a raid on a Baath party office.
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- U.S. defense officials said a radar-avoiding B-2 stealth
bomber had dropped two 4,600-pound bombs -- known as bunker-busters --
on a communications center in downtown Baghdad.
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- Iraq swore to fight on and promised "living hell"
for the invaders.
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- Ladki quoted residents as saying the attack on the Baath
office in Baghdad's Mansour district at around noon demolished the party's
neighborhood office and several nearby houses.
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- "It basically turned the block into rubble,"
Ladki said. Local residents said they had pulled eight bodies from the
wreckage, including Baath Party militia members and several civilians.
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- A large fire blazed on the west bank of the Tigris River
and thick, billowing smoke rose on the horizon after dozens of blasts in
the eastern and southern fringes of the capital.
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- Iraqi defense positions spat anti-aircraft fire above
the rooftops as U.S. missiles hit government offices, including the ministries
of information, planning and foreign affairs.
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- The U.S. military said two precision-guided missiles
from one of its bat-wing, radar-evading B-2 stealth bombers had taken out
a key communications tower on the east bank of the Tigris.
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- Ladki said at least one missile plowed into the ground
floor of a large telecommunications building in Rashid Street.
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- Militiamen cleared rubble from the smashed and smoldering
al-Alawiya telecommunications center in nearby Saadun Street.
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- "This is a civilian communications center, why did
they hit it?" said one resident. "It seems the serious military
action in Baghdad is getting nearer."
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- The raids knocked out many telephone lines -- some of
the first bombing damage to civilian infrastructure.
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- OIL TRENCHES
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- Huge plumes of black smoke from burning oil pits, lit
by Iraqi forces to try to hamper U.S. and British pilots, clouded the otherwise
clear blue skies over the city.
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- Hundreds of ruling Baath party militiamen armed with
AK-47 assault rifles guarded government buildings and manned sandbag positions
in public squares and gardens.
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- Explosions seemed to come from all sides during one concentrated
phase of bombing in the early hours of the morning, raising orange-glowing
clouds into the night skies.
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- As dawn broke over the city of five million, the explosions
sounded closer to the city's outskirts where units of President Saddam
Hussein's Republican Guard are believed to be dug in.
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- The Al-Salam presidential palace, first hit last week,
suffered fresh damage overnight and the muezzin of a mosque nearby hurled
defiance through its loudspeakers: "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest).
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- Earlier, a flurry of blasts was clearly audible during
a live television interview by Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Saeed
al-Sahaf, who said his country would not be intimidated.
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- "It will become obvious to the world that they (U.S.
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, the night sky briefly illuminated behind him.
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