- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S.
forces tried to kill Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with a huge bomb strike
in Baghdad, U.S. officials said on Tuesday as American tanks fought an
intense battle with Iraqi soldiers in the heart of the city.
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- U.S. aircraft dropped four 2,000 pound bombs on a building
in a residential area on Monday after U.S. intelligence reports said the
Iraqi leader and his sons Uday and Qusay might have been inside with other
Iraqi leaders, U.S. officials said.
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- "A leadership target was hit very hard," Major
Brad Bartlett, a spokesman at U.S. Central Command war headquarters in
Qatar, said on Tuesday, the 20th day of the war. "Battle damage assessment
is ongoing."
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- There was no word on the fate of Saddam or his sons.
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- The building was destroyed in the blasts by a B-1 bomber
in the Baghdad district of Mansur that gouged a huge crater.
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- Mansur is a stronghold of Saddam's Ba'ath Party and Iraqi
television showed pictures on Friday of what it said was Saddam strolling
through the streets of areas including Mansur. He was hailed by people
who promised to die for him if needed.
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- Saddam was also targeted in an initial U.S. strike in
the early hours of March 20 Iraqi time on a residential compound on the
western outskirts of Baghdad.
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- On Tuesday, U.S. tanks which stormed into the heart of
the city on Monday morning, were engaged in a fierce clash with Iraqi forces
after staking out a U.S. foothold in the Iraqi capital, witnesses said.
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- TANK FIRE, MORTARS
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- Tank fire, mortars and artillery could be heard as the
tanks apparently tried to advance toward the north of the compound, by
the river Tigris. Iraqi forces could be seen firing back at the tank positions.
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- Two big blasts were heard near the Information Ministry
and U.S. planes were overhead. Black smoke billowed into the sky.
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- Al-Jazeera television said its Baghdad office was hit
during a U.S. air raid and some of its correspondents were wounded.
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- To the east of the battered capital, Marines were attacking
an airfield.
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- On Monday, witnesses said two houses were flattened and
four other buildings were badly damaged in the air raid on Mansur. They
said nine Iraqis were killed and four wounded.
-
- A security guard said people were buried under the rubble
and he said one missile gouged a crater 30 feet deep and 50 feet wide in
the road. A bulldozer was seen lifting concrete blocks and twisted steel
support rods.
-
- The U.S. military said the assault on central Baghdad
by over 100 tanks and armored vehicles was a show of force, designed to
demonstrate that troops could enter the capital at will, rather than a
final attack on the city of five million.
-
- It was unclear if the tanks would stay in the city or
pull out. U.S. networks showed pictures of U.S. troops lounging around
inside the palace and showed images of the sumptuous interiors with chandeliers
and stained glass windows.
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- President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
were meeting in Northern Ireland on Tuesday and were set to say that they
would welcome a U.N. role in postwar Iraq in answer to widespread outrage
-- but not as the controlling authority.
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- The two leaders, in their third face-to-face meeting
in less than a month, have turned their attention to the postwar period
now that U.S. and British troops seem to have the upper hand.
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- Secretary of State Colin Powell, accompanying Bush to
Belfast, said Washington would send a team to Iraq this week to begin looking
at what is needed to set up an interim Iraqi authority.
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