Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hailed Iraqi military efforts to resist a US-led invasion to overthrow him yesterday and said the invaders had suffered heavy losses.
"Be patient, victory is coming," Saddam said in an address on state television, praising the "valiant" contribution of the Iraqi military in resisting a US and British invasion that began on Thursday.
Wearing military uniform and reading a speech from behind a podium, Saddam praised Iraqi commanders including at Umm Qasr, where US-led tanks, ground-attack jets, artillery and infantry have failed to dislodge more than 120 Iraqi Republican Guards.
It was not clear where or when the 20-minute speech was recorded but the fact that Saddam mentioned successes in Umm Qasr and other battles suggested it had been made in the last day or two. Behind Saddam was a white wall and an Iraqi flag.
He also said "victory is very near" in Basra, southern Iraq, which US and British tank units were still trying to secure. He called on defenders of Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul to hold firm, saying "despicable enemies would be defeated."
Saddam said Iraqi forces had inflicted serious losses on US-led forces. He said that victory was coming and that the invaders were "trapped" by heroic Iraqi resistance.
"The more they lose, the more they will bombard you," he said, but pledging "to do all we can to humiliate the enemy."
Correspondents in Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East said they were confident that the man on television was Saddam. The Iraqi leader has a handful of lookalikes who sometimes stand in for him but rarely speak.
Speculation has abounded about Saddam's fate since the war started with air strikes on Baghdad intended to kill him. Some reports said he might be dead, others that he was so badly wounded he had to receive a blood transfusion.
The US Defense Department had no immediate comment on Saddam's speech, but privately some US defense officials said they remained sceptical whether the Iraqi leader's remarks were live or taped earlier.
British army spokesman Group Captain Al Lockwood told Fox TV called the speech another "propaganda stunt."
"It could have been pre-recorded. There was no real factual evidence there," he said.
Saddam rarely, if ever, appears live on television. As the speech ended, new explosions hit the Iraqi capital.
Within three hours of the first US-led attack on Baghdad on Thursday, a tired-looking Saddam appeared on television, in a military uniform, urging his people to fight. But the CIA says it could have been pre-recorded -- even though he referred in the address to the start of the raid at dawn.
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