US forces 'capture' Baghdad airport

US forces trying to take Baghdad's main airport fought some Iraqis there last night, but resistance appeared minimal, military sources said.

Reuters correspondent Luke Baker, 33 kilometres southwest of the capital with the engineer units of the 3rd Infantry Division, said military sources told him a 3rd Infantry task force was trying to take control of the airport.

"It's going to take some time to secure the airport, although we haven't encountered much opposition yet," said Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Quarles, with the infantry division's engineer brigade.

The ABC television network said on its website that US troops had captured the airport with tanks and armoured units.

It said its correspondent, Bob Schmidt, who was with the 3rd Infantry Division, was standing on the tarmac of Saddam International Airport when he filed his report.

"US forces encountered very little Iraqi resistance, said Schmidt, although some units of the 3rd Infantry Division did encounter scattered firing by Iraqi foot soldiers and men in pickups," the network said.

No further information was immediately available on events at the airport, but military sources said US forces had discovered a tunnel system under the airport and one tunnel led all the way back to the Tigris river.

Baghdad's Saddam International Airport is about 20 km southwest of the centre of the sprawling city of five million. Sporadic US artillery and rocket fire had been launched towards Baghdad since darkness fell.

US troops said they had expected the airport to be defended by three Iraqi brigades. Reporters taken to the airport by Iraqi officials yesterday afternoon saw little sign of military defence.

As ground forces advanced towards Baghdad, planes blasted targets in and around the city, where the power went off for the first time since the US-led war started two weeks ago. US officials said their forces had not targeted the electricity grid.

"They've taken several outlying areas and are closer to the centre of the Iraqi capital than many American commuters are from their downtown offices," US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing.

He said President Saddam's fate was sealed. "For the senior leadership, there is no way out. Their fate has been sealed by their actions," he said.

A Reuters reporter said dozens of Iraqis, including some civilians, were killed and scores injured in the village of Furat near Baghdad airport yesterday evening after a barrage of US artillery and rocket attacks.

In a sign that President Saddam's authority throughout Iraq may be crumbling, a senior Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, ordered believers in a "fatwa" (edict) not to oppose invasion troops, according to a Shi'ite group based in London which represents his followers worldwide.

Ayatollah al-Sistani, who is known and respected throughout the Muslim world, had been held under house arrest by President Saddam and previously, possibly under duress, had issued a statement urging Iraqis to resist the invasion.

Iraqi satellite television showed footage yesterday evening of President Saddam chairing a meeting. As usual, there was no way to verify when the footage was shot.

In the nearby village of Furat, Iraqi officials put the total death toll in and around the village at 83, but this could not be independently confirmed.

Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki said there were more than 120 people wounded in the attack on the village, which lies between the airport and the Iraqi capital.

"We saw a pile of dead bodies at one of the four hospitals where the victims were taken. Most of them appeared to be military," he said. "But there were civilian casualties too."

US officers had earlier said parts of four elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions were moving south, setting up a potential showdown for the capital.

But Mr Rumsfeld said the Iraqis had been forced to reinforce their crack divisions with regular army units which were less well-trained and less reliable.

He said after days of pulverising air attacks and artillery barrages, the Republican Guards had lost much of their equipment and taken heavy casualties.

US and British political and military leaders fear urban warfare in Baghdad could be prolonged and bloody and they refused to be drawn on when they might authorise a final push to capture the city of five million people.

Mr Rumsfeld said Iraq had run exercises in Baghdad before the war started and had organised block captains and dug trenches in anticipation of street fighting.

"The regime has been weakened to be sure, but it is still lethal, and it may prove to be more lethal in the final moments before it ends," he said.

US officers said they had met little resistance in their advance. "We're pushing on really fast," said Captain Kevin Jackson of the Engineer Brigade of the 3rd Division. "There doesn't seem to have been much opposition so far."

At Central Command, a US commander said special forces had also raided a residence of President Saddam northwest of Baghdad and blocked the road to his hometown of Tikrit.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf accused US forces of killing 14 people with cluster bombs and said US claims to be near Baghdad were "silly".

"They've not been able to control any Iraqi city. We're waging a war of attrition against this snake and we will be victorious," he told a Baghdad news conference.

But the accumulated dispatches from the hundreds of reporters accompanying US units lent an air of unreality to such statements.

US forces did not escape completely unscathed. A Black Hawk helicopter crashed near the city of Kerbala and a US F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber also went down. But US officials were not certain either incident was caused by hostile fire.

The US officials were also investigating a "possible friendly fire incident" involving an F-15E Strike Eagle plane and ground forces in which one US soldier was killed and several were reported injured or missing.

In northern Iraq, Kurdish fighters, backed by small groups of US soldiers, advanced towards the northern oil town of Mosul but were met by heavy machinegun and rifle fire, Reuters correspondent Sebastian Alison said.

Further south, US troops moved into the centre of the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf, searching for paramilitary fighters, and tightened their grip on Nassiriya, where they appeared to be in full control of bridges over the Euphrates.

In the far south, British forces surrounding Iraq's second city of Basra edged into the outskirts, capturing an industrial complex where Iraqi militia had spearheaded fierce resistance.

The US lists 54 dead and 12 missing since the war began. Britain says it has suffered 27 dead.

Iraq has not given figures for military deaths, but Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said more than 1,250 civilians have been killed, a figure that could not be independently checked.