Baghdad is blasted from the skies

THUNDEROUS explosions rocked Baghdad yesterday and a towering column of churning orange smoke rose over the skyline in some of the mightiest bombardment of the Iraqi capital in days.

Iraqi officials said at least seven people were killed, and news reports said eight more died yesterday afternoon.

The bombings led by two 4,700-pound, satellite-guided "bunker-busting" bombs were aimed at disrupting communications between Saddam Hussein's leadership and his military, US officials said.

An explosion at a crowded city market claimed more than 50 lives and left dozens wounded yesterday, the Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera claimed.

Witnesses spoke of a missile attack on the al-Nasser market in the west of the capital, Al-Jazeera said.

The barrage on the communications tower on the Tigris River in downtown Baghdad started shortly after 11pm Thursday and continued sporadically through the night.

Bombardments of the ruling Baath Party headquarters yesterday afternoon killed eight more people, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television and Al Manar of Lebanon reported.

The attacks gutted a seven-storey telephone exchange building in an area called Al-Alwya, leaving the street strewn with slabs of concrete, iron rods and corrugated metal.

Husein Moeini, telecommunications director of Baghdad, said he believed people were buried beneath the rubble, but journalists who arrived at the scene less than three hours after it was hit did not see a rescue operation under way.

At a second telephone exchange, Al-Rasheed, the 10-storey building was largely intact yesterday, except for some broken windows. Next to it, however, was a huge crater in the road where Iraqi officials said a missile apparently lodged without exploding.

Air strikes also targeted positions of the Republican Guard, Saddam's best-trained, best-equipped fighters, in a ring outside the city.

Seven people were killed and 92 wounded in the strikes, Information Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf said.

The air strikes hit at or near the Information and Planning ministries and at telephone installations "as if government buildings are empty of human beings and there are no civilians in them," al-Sahhaf said.

Al-Sahhaf denounced speculation that the Iraqi forces would use chemical weapons. Advancing forces recently found chemical weapons suits and gas masks left by retreating soldiers.

He said having such equipment is standard procedure for any army.

Muslim cleric Abdel-Ghafour Al-Quisi, with a Kalashnikov rifle resting against the pulpit, delivered a fiery sermon broadcast on state television Friday, the Muslim holy day.

"May God install terror in the hearts of our enemies, and set against them invisible soldiers," he said at one of Baghdad's largest mosques.