A defiant Iraqi President Saddam Hussein yesterday promised to hand Iraq a swift victory as British and US forces marching on Baghdad suffered a new blow in a string of military setbacks -- the downing of a helicopter.
Hammering further at coalition morale, Iraq said it had foiled an attempted British and US landing near the northern oil capital of Kirkuk and that air raids around the country had caused hundreds of civilian casualties.
"Victory is near," a uniformed and solemn Saddam said in his second address to the nation since the war was launched. "The more they advance into Iraqi territory, the more they head into a dead end," he said following reports that coalition forces were just 150km from Baghdad.
PHOTO: AP
Reading slowly from a prepared text, Saddam offered skeptics evidence he had survived at least the early stages of the war to oust his regime by making reference to ongoing battles with coalition forces in southern port town of Umm Qasr.
But the Iraqi president is known to use look-alikes as decoys.
British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said hours afterward that Saddam's broadcast was "not live" and that analysis was ongoing to see if it really was the Iraqi leader.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"Hit your enemy with force and precision," Saddam told his people. "Cut their throats. The enemy is stuck in Iraqi territory. Hit it."
March to baghdad
US forces meanwhile marched relentlessly toward Baghdad, with US Marines closing in on the capital from the southeast and US infantry to the west surging past Najaf, some 160km from the city.
Coalition forces continued to pound the country, with dozens of explosions booming across Baghdad and the main northern city of Mosul.
Huge clouds of smoke billowed over the capital in the early hours after innumerable strikes that seemed to shake the very foundations of the city.
A day after suffering its worst casualties in the five-day war and being forced to watch US prisoners of war being paraded on enemy cameras, the US admitted losing an Apache helicopter and its two-man crew to enemy fire yesterday.
"We do have an Apache helicopter down in Iraq," said an official who asked not to be named, at allied forward command headquarters at As-Saliyah in Qatar. The statement came after Baghdad television showed pictures of a downed but intact US chopper.
Iraq said the attack helicopter was shot down over Karbala, south of Baghdad. The aircraft was apparently intact but the television report gave no indication of the whereabouts of the crew. It showed it surrounded by Iraqi civilians dancing and shouting.
Iraq also said its troops had foiled attempted British and US landings in key towns both southwest and north of the capital.
"Yesterday, they tried to land mercenaries near Najaf and Karbala, but they were encircled and fled," Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said.
"They tried the same thing, in the north, near Kirkuk, but were pursued and fled," the minister said.
Prisoners taken
The Pentagon said around 10 US soldiers had been taken prisoner, and Iraq said the troops had been killed in fierce fighting in Nasiriyah, where it claimed 25 US and British soldiers were dead.
In the war of images Sunday, five frightened-looking US soldiers, including one woman, were paraded before Iraqi television cameras, a display aimed at humiliating Washington and rallying support for Saddam in the Arab world.
Yesterday in Baghdad, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said Iraq had taken more US or British prisoners of war than the five previously shown.
Al-Jazeera television on Sunday also broadcast bodies of what looked like dead US soldiers -- images which were kept off the screens of US viewers.
Blood-drenched corpses lay stretched in a makeshift morgue, the body of one resting in a thickening pool of blood, and others which appeared shot in the head.
"There have to be tough days ahead," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. "Wars are unpredictable. There are still a large number of difficulties and things that could go wrong that are still ahead of us."
Britain said none of its troops had been taken prisoner in Iraq but that two British airmen in a Royal Air Force Tornado were killed by friendly fire from a US Patriot missile near the Kuwaiti border with Iraq.
The incident Sunday came a day after two air accidents that claimed 14 British lives.
A British military source quoted in The Times described the incidents as "the worst start you could have" and said "there will be a slight undermining of confidence on behalf of the guys [troops]."
The International Committee for the Red Cross said the broadcast of the soldiers was a violation of the international rules of war and Iraq said it would respect the conventions.
Rumsfeld said the US had about 2,000 Iraqi prisoners, all of whom were being treated in accordance with international law.
In other developments, Syria's official SANA news agency said five Syrians were killed and another 10 hurt when a US missile struck a bus in Rutba, western Iraq, as it was returning to neighboring Syria on Sunday morning.
The Pentagon meanwhile played down reports of allied forces having discovered a "huge" chemical weapons factory at An Najaf in central Iraq, saying they were "premature."
In the north, US warplanes were said to have struck Iraqi frontlines between the northern oil capital of Kirkuk and the Kurdish-held town of Chamchamal, for the first time early yesterday.
Avoiding trouble
The commander of the US-led invasion of Iraq said yesterday his forces had made rapid progress and were deliberately skirting enemy formations in their drive on the capital.
Giving an upbeat report of the five-day-old invasion after 24 hours which were riddled with setbacks, General Tommy Franks described Iraqi resistance as "sporadic" and predicted that cleanup operations would take more time.
"We've intentionally bypassed enemy formations, to include paramilitary and the Fadayeeen [suicide soldiers], and so you can expect that our cleanup operations are going to be ongoing across the days in the future."
Franks said that Republican Guard units defending Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's power base in and around Baghdad had been hit and would be hit again.
He said the tenacity of some Iraqi units -- which had produced what he called "some terrific firefights" -- had not come as a surprise and warned that his forces risked more casualties ahead.
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