- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Explosions
rocked Baghdad throughout the day and into Saturday night as a relentless
succession of U.S. raids sent fireballs billowing into the sky and covered
parts of the Iraq capital in a pall of smoke.
-
- A latest series of blasts shook Baghdad, home to more
than five million people, at around 11:30 p.m. (4:30 p.m. EST), and large
areas were plunged into darkness for about half an hour. (Note - half of
Baghdad's residents are said to be 15 years of
- age and under. -ed)
-
- Intelligence headquarters and a presidential palace,
both targeted on Friday night, were pounded again late on Saturday.
-
- "They are definitely raising the intensity now,"
Reuters correspondent Khaled Yacoub Oweis said.
-
- A Reuters correspondent in the northern town of Kalak
said he saw the dim flashes of what seemed to be explosions near Mosul,
25 miles away, shortly after midnight on Sunday.
-
- Iraqi ministers said three people had been killed and
207 wounded in Baghdad on Friday night, the fiercest attack so far in the
U.S.-led war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
-
- The city's air raid sirens gave little or no warning
of the daylight raids. There was often little sign of Iraqi anti-aircraft
fire, which had been intense during the overnight U.S. air and missile
strikes on the center of the city.
-
- "Three people were martyred in Baghdad last night
and we are preparing for more deaths because the situation is developing
rapidly," Iraqi Health Minister Umeed Midhat Mubarak told a news conference.
-
- Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf earlier
told reporters that 207 civilians had been wounded overnight, making a
total of 250 since raids started on Thursday.
-
- Iraqi forces moved on Saturday to set oil-filled trenches
ablaze around the capital in an apparent bid to create a smokescreen to
hinder air strikes by U.S. and British forces.
-
- At least two dozen fires were raging around Baghdad,
sending walls of thick black smoke into the sky. But the strategy might
not prove effective against attacks because many modern weapons use satellites
to navigate.
-
- FIREBALLS AND MUSHROOM CLOUDS
-
- The overnight raids sent huge fireballs and mushroom
clouds of smoke and debris into the night sky. They targeted Saddam's main
palace on the banks of the River Tigris, government and military targets
and other symbols of his rule.
-
- Dazed parents said their children trembled with fear
at the onslaught on the sprawling city dotted with palm trees.
-
- Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul reported two explosions
in central Baghdad as dawn was breaking.
-
- Less than an hour later, a third blast echoed from the
city's outskirts. Air raid sirens wailed and ambulances raced through the
streets.
-
- In the first afternoon attack, a series of explosions
started on the outskirts accompanied by the overhead rumble of warplanes,
and gradually moved toward the center of the city.
-
- Sirens sounded after the attacks, rather than before,
and no anti-aircraft fire could be heard in the city center.
-
- At dusk, more large blasts were heard pounding on Baghdad's
outskirts and new fires lit the darkening skies over the south and east
of the city.
-
- On the ground, small groups of soldiers with rifles were
out on the largely deserted streets.
-
- Shrapnel and glass littered the riverside Abu Nuwas Street,
across the Tigris from Saddam's presidential compound.
-
- In the compound, which houses the headquarters of Qusay,
the younger son charged by Saddam with defending Baghdad, a building still
smoldered. A small villa belonging to Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan
was destroyed.
-
- Two other buildings, the Palace of Peace and the Palace
of Flowers, were struck and fire engines were seen at the gates of the
Jumhouriya (Republic) Presidential Palace, next to broken water pipes and
other debris.
-
- An air force center in Saadoun Street in central Baghdad
was also hit by repeated cruise missile strikes, while the front of a ministry
building close to the Rasheed Hotel was shattered.
-
- Shaken residents said despite the terrifying fury of
the attacks they would not take to the air raid shelters scattered around
the city. Memories of an attack which killed hundreds of people in a shelter
in the 1991 Gulf War still linger.
-
- "We'd prefer to die at home than suffocate underground
in a shelter," said Suad Saleh. "I won't go to the shelters."
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