- (AFP) --Fighting raged across Baghdad as US troops backed
by tanks and warplanes battled for control of the city in ferocious clashes,
while three journalists were killed in separate US strikes.
-
- Mystery surrounded the fate of Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein after US troops Monday targetted a building where he was believed
to be meeting with his two sons.
-
- US President George W. Bush, meeting his chief ally British
Prime Minister Tony Blair in Belfast, said he did not know if Saddam had
survived the US bomb attack Monday.
-
- "I don't know whether he survived... The only thing
I know is that he is losing power... Saddam Hussein will be gone,"
Bush said.
-
- US tanks were on Tuesday inching slowly but surely across
Baghdad's main presidential compound -- a symbol of Saddam's 24-year iron-fisted
rule over the country -- amid heavy exchanges of tank, artillery and gun
fire.
-
- Two US tanks succeeded in moving north out of the palace
and captured a key bridge over the river Tigris, where they met stiff resistance
from Iraqi forces encamped on the other side.
-
- Tuesday afternoon coalition warplanes bombed the southern
and southeastern outskirts of the city following a four-hour break in the
raids.
-
- Earlier Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso,
a cameraman from Spanish televison station Telecinco, were killed after
a US attack on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad that houses foreign journalists.
-
- The US military said a coalition tank had fired a single
round at the hotel after coming under grenade and small arms fire from
the building. Three other Reuters staff members were also injured in the
attack.
-
- A correspondent for the Al-Jazeera Arabic television
network died and a cameraman was injured after the station's offices were
hit in an separate attack that the Qatar-based network charged was a deliberate
US strike.
-
- The US military denied deliberately hitting Al-Jazeera,
saying it only targeted legitimate military targets.
-
- The International Federation of Journalists (IJF) said
however there was "no doubt" the US attacks could be deliberately
targetting journalists, which would make them a "grave and serious
violation of international law."
-
- Spain said it would ask the United States for an explanation
of the Spanish cameraman's death, which brought to at least 12 the number
of journalists and staff killed in the 20 days since the war broke out.
-
- As the fighting raged in Baghdad, Bush and Blair ended
a two-day summit in Belfast, where the British leader proclaimed Saddam's
regime was now coming to an end.
-
- "In all parts of the country our power is strengthening,
the regime is weakening and Iraqi people are turning towards us,"
he said.
-
- Bush added: "I can't tell you if all 10 fingers
are off the throat (of the Iraqi people), but finger by finger they are
coming off."
-
- In Baghdad, a US Air Force A10 "tank killer"
plane launched an attack on Saddam's Republican palace compound early Tuesday,
swooping twice to fire on the northern entrance and on the nearby planning
ministry.
-
- A US commander later said that a A-10 Thunderbolt strike
aircraft was shot down over Baghdad and crashed, but the pilot ejected
and was medivaced out.
-
- Thousands of armoured vehicles and Humvees were Tuesday
pouring into the capital with convoys of amphibious assault vehicles, Abrams
tanks, and armoured personnel carriers struck logjams in the outer eastern
suburbs and on canal bridges.
-
- Two US Apache attack helicopters also flew over central
Baghdad for the first time since the beginning of the war, firing on targets
in the capital's southern sector.
-
- "We just continue to seize the initiative, will
continue to push. Hopefully the regime will fall. It's just a matter of
time," said Major Mike Birmingham, public affairs officer for the
3rd Infantry Division.
-
- US forces continued to fan out across Baghdad, and were
only a few kilometres from encircling the city, officers said.
-
- But Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf
remained defiant, telling journalists US forces will either surrender "or
be burned in their tanks."
-
- Hundreds of families fled the intensive bombing, driving
eastwards in cars, trucks and minibuses that were filled with mattresses,
kitchen utensils, beds and food, AFP correspondents reported.
-
- "I'm closing the house and leaving with my family
for a safer place. I will come back every now and then to see if something
happened," said Ali Rishek, 53, before driving away with his wife
and their three children.
-
- In Washington, a US official speaking on condition of
anonymity said US war planes had hit a building in Baghdad on Monday where
Iraqi leaders including Saddam and his sons may have been staying.
-
- "Obviously we hope that part of the leadership was
taken out of action, but we don't know at this point who might have been
there when the ordnance arrived," the official said.
-
- A spokesman for US Central Command in Qatar later confirmed
that US warplanes dropped four satellite-guided bombs on the building.
-
- But the spokesman did not say who might have been inside
nor whether anyone was killed in the attack at 3:00 pm (1100 GMT) Monday
in the Al-Mansur area of the city.
-
- The chief of staff of British forces in the Gulf warned
of a potential "final act of defiance" by Saddam now that the
collapse of his regime looks "inevitable."
-
- "There is always the possibility that they were
able to organise some final act of defiance -- and we've got to keep on
our guard against that," said Major General Peter Wall.
-
- The meeting between Bush and Blair, their third in as
many weeks, came amid reports of differences between London and Washington
about the role of the United Nations in post-war Iraq.
-
- Britain reportedly wants the United Nations to oversee
any interim Iraqi military administration while Washington seeks initial
US-British military control.
-
- But Bush said at a press conference with Blair that the
United Nations will play a "vital role" in post-war Iraq.
-
- Meanwhile, a US military spokesman dismissed as a "false
alarm" earlier fears that US forces had been exposed to mustard gas
while in an Iraqi ammunition storage building near the central city of
Najaf.
-
- In southern Iraq, a spokesman for British forces said
"a couple more days" were needed before the second largest Iraqi
city of Basra could be declared secure, a day after Britain has said the
battle for the city was largely over.
-
- While some Basra residents ripped down murals of Saddam
after the British entered, thousands looted public buildings and the homes
of Baath party members.
-
- But one Basra resident told AFP: "The people in
Basra feel defeated. Sure, we certainly hated Saddam but we also hate the
British and Americans."
-
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