US troops seize Saddam’s palace in ‘show of force’

A US ARMOURED force punched into the heart of Baghdad yesterday and established a stronghold in one of President Saddam Hussein’s palaces, while troops in central Iraq found a cache of suspected Iraqi chemical weapons.

The US military said the assault on central Baghdad by more than 100 tanks and armoured 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.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he did not know what had happened to Saddam or where he was but said he no longer ran much of Iraq and was running out of soldiers.

"There are three possibilities: He's either dead or injured or not willing to show himself," Mr Rumsfeld said.

Iraqi state-run television showed footage of Saddam, wearing military fatigues, and his son Qusay meeting top aides. It was not clear when the meeting took place.

British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said there were strong indications that a member of Saddam's close entourage, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali", had been killed during an air raid on the southern city of Basra.

As darkness fell, US troops remained in the presidential compound on the west bank of the Tigris river, apparently determined to stay the night and deliver a powerful message to citizens and Saddam loyalists that his time was almost done.

Major Michael Hamlet of the US 101st Airborne Division said earlier that initial tests on substances found at a military training camp in central Iraq revealed levels of nerve agents sarin and tabun and the blister agent lewisite.

"If tests from our experts confirm this, this could be the smoking gun. It would prove Saddam has the weapons we have said he has all along," he said.

Maj Hamlet said experts would do more tests today on the substances found at a camp in Albu Mahawish, on the Euphrates river between Kerbala and Hilla, site of ancient Babylon.

But US General Ben Freakly of the 101st Airborne, said later that tests on substances at the camp and a separate agricultural site, both in the town of Albu Mahawish, could show they had a less sinister purpose.

"This could be either some kind of pesticide," the general said. "On the other hand it could be a chemical agent not weaponised a liquid agent that is in drums."

In Baghdad, hospitals battled with a constant stream of civilian dead and injured. Doctors said they were running short of anesthetics and medical equipment.

Nine Iraqis, including a baby, were killed when an air raid flattened two houses in a suburb of western Baghdad in what witnesses said was a US air raid. At the Kadhimiya hospital in the north of Baghdad, doctors said they had taken in 18 dead and 142 injured in two days, while the Kindi hospital had four dead and 176 injured.

"Surgeons have been working round the clock for the past two days and most are exhausted. Conditions are terrible," said Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, local spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A defiant Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said the invaders were "committing suicide" at the capital's gates.

Denying what was visible to many Baghdad residents as well as television viewers around the world, Mr Sahaf said there had been no big US raid.

"Baghdad is safe," he told reporters at the Palestine hotel. "Their infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad. Don't believe those liars."

In the south, British troops, guarded by tanks and helicopter gunships, walked unopposed almost to the centre of Basra, Iraq's second city, after a two-week siege.