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Middle East - AP

Massive Explosions Rock Central Baghdad

By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Massive explosions rocked central Baghdad late Thursday night, sending a towering plume of smoke skyward in the strongest blasts felt in the city in days.

Shortly after 11 p.m. in Baghdad (3 p.m. EST), explosions shook the capital near the city center. Buildings close to the Information Ministry appeared to have been hit, sending a huge plume of smoke skyward.

Earlier Thursday, Iraq (news - web sites)'s defense minister said the real battle for Baghdad will be on its streets, and that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime will prolong the war as long as possible.

"The enemy must come inside Baghdad, and that will be its grave," said Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed.

"We feel that this war must be prolonged so the enemy pays a high price," he said at a news conference at a downtown Baghdad hotel.

Asked whether the fighting in Baghdad will be on the streets, Ahmed replied, "Yes."

He called the two-day sandstorm that engulfed Iraq this week and slowed the U.S.-led coalition "a divine gift to tell the aggressor that he is an aggressor."

President Bush (news - web sites) said Thursday the United States was prepared to fight "however long it takes."

The Iraqi health minister said 36 civilians were killed and 215 wounded in U.S. airstrikes on Baghdad a day earlier, and he accused U.S.-led forces of deliberately targeting civilians to break the people's will.

Loud explosions were heard in and around Baghdad again Thursday, and witnesses said an unknown number of people were killed and injured when a housing complex for employees of a weapons-producing facility came under attack. The Military Industrialization Authority of Iraq complex is in the Al-Youssifiah area, about 12 miles south of the capital.

Another blast about 700 yards west of the Information Ministry, possibly from a missile, sent scores of journalists fleeing. Anti-aircraft guns on the roof of the ministry opened fire, witnesses said, but there was no immediate information on damage or casualties.

One of Baghdad's main telephone facilities also was hit early Thursday, causing some disruptions in service.

Iraqi state television, which was still on the air, reported Thursday that Saddam chaired a meeting of the ruling Baath Party, his top aides and his son, Qusai. Although it did not show any video from that meeting, it said Saddam and the leadership urged Iraqi fighters to exploit what it called the "exhaustion" of coalition forces.

Silent video was shown of another meeting of Saddam, Qusai and other party officials.

Wednesday's attack on a marketplace in Baghdad's northern Al-Shaab neighborhood killed 14 people, and Iraqi officials blamed U.S. cruise missiles. The U.S. military denied it had targeted the neighborhood.

"They are targeting the human beings in Iraq to decrease their morale," Iraqi Health Minister Omeed Medhat Mubarak said. "They are not discriminating, differentiating."

He said Wednesday's civilian death toll in Baghdad was 36, and put the total number of civilian deaths at 350 since the U.S.-led war on Iraq began a week ago.

In Qatar, the U.S. military said "it was entirely possible" that an Iraqi missile was responsible for Wednesday's marketplace explosion.

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said there was an Iraqi missile battery near the neighborhood and that Iraqi has been using old missile stock fired with guidance systems turned off.

"We think it is entirely possible that this may have been an Iraqi missile that went up and came down, or, given the behaviors of the regime lately, it may have been a deliberate attack inside of town," Brooks said.

He said the United States had an air mission in the area but not in the neighborhood that was devastated by the explosion.

"We did have an air mission that attacked some targets, not in that area but in an another area, and they did encounter some surface-to-air missile fire," Brooks told the daily briefing at the coalition headquarters.

The sandstorms gave way to blue skies Thursday, raising fears among inhabitants that they were in for a day of intensive bombings.

They worried that allied forces would try to make up for two days during which the storm grounded U.S. warplanes and slowed down the advance on the Iraqi capital.

Residents awoke to find everything from cars to dining tables, windows and books under a coat of fine yellow desert sand.

Parts of the city looked almost normal, with hardly a store shuttered, hundreds of shoppers milling around, and the streets jammed with what looked like the usual traffic. But Baghdad's defenders rekindled fires intended to obscure bombing targets, sending clouds of gray smoke drifting across the sky.

Jomaa al-Qurishi, 29, sold newspapers in Abu Nawas Street, a road famous for its art galleries and fish restaurants, on the east bank of the Tigris River.

"I have been selling newspapers at this spot for 13 years and no bombs are going to stop me," he said. "Death comes to you at any time wherever you may be."