Western military analysts said they were puzzled by the comparatively light resistance at the airport.
Philip Mitchell, army analyst at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies said Republican Guards might have melted into the city, perhaps as part of Iraqi plans to suck US and British forces into bloody street fighting.
But those forces were aware of that tactic and would not be drawn in. "So it's perhaps self-defeating," Mitchell said.
For the first time since the conflict began, city power went off late on Thursday, plunging Baghdad into darkness. US officials denied they targeted power supplies.
Meanwhile, a US officer said last night that troops south of Baghdad found a ``suspicious site'' with thousands of boxes of white powder, chemical warfare documents and nerve agent antidote. A senior official familiar with initial testing said later the white powder was believed to be explosives.
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