Three Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM) launched off the USS Donald Cook head toward their targets in Iraq early March 20, 2003, beginning the U.S. aggression On Iraq

BAGHDAD, March 20 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The United States unilaterally launched war on Iraq Thursday, March 20, with early-morning air strikes on Baghdad, under the pretext of ousting President Saddam Hussein from power and "liberate" the country despite months of intense world criticism of U.S. plans.

Huge clouds of smoke billowed in the dawn sky of Baghdad and anti-aircraft fire and explosions were heard in the southeast of the city as U.S.-led forces mounted three air strikes in an hour after a U.S. “deadline” passed for Saddam to choose exile, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

U.S. President George W. Bush, in a televised address, said his forces had begun "striking selected targets of military importance" in a war "to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger."

"These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign," Bush said.

"Now that conflict has come, the only way to limit its duration is to apply decisive force. And I assure you, this will not be a campaign of half measures and we will accept no outcome but victory."

Bush said the United States and its allies "will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."

"The enemies you confront will come to know your skill and bravery. The people you liberate will witness the “honorable and decent spirit” of the American military," he said.

In Baghdad, the streets were silent before the widely expected attack, which came some 90 minutes after Bush's 48-hour deadline to Saddam and his two sons to quit the country expired, with official buildings keeping on their lights and no curfew orders.

But the United States and Britain have 280,000 troops awaiting orders to descend on Iraq, in what U.S. officials say will be a blistering "shock and awe" operation aimed at hammering Saddam's forces into quick submission.

One U.S. defense official said the first strikes were designed to prepare the battlefield for more intense operations.

"It is a limited thing. It ain't A-Day," said the Pentagon official, referring to the slogan for the start of the air war.

Another official said reports that the initial strikes were aimed at "decapitation" of the regime were exaggerated.

Bush said Saddam had placed Iraqi troops and equipment in civilian areas, "attempting to use innocent men, women and children as shields for his own military; a final atrocity against his people."

But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has voiced fears that the war on Iraq could be a humanitarian catastrophe, with UN officials working on plans to cope with a flight of as many as 600,000 Iraqi refugees.

Days ahead of the strikes, tens of thousands of people poured from the government-controlled areas into northern Iraq's Kurdish region, which has been autonomous with the protection of U.S. and British warplanes since after the 1991 Gulf war.

The prospect of a U.S.-led war has shattered the world community and strained relations between Washington and longtime allies such as France, while drawing warnings of attacks on U.S. interests worldwide.

Shortly after the launch of the war, the State Department warned U.S. citizens "of an increased potential for anti-American violence, including terrorist actions against U.S. citizens."

The United States and Britain made clear earlier in the week they would go to war without further backing of the United Nations Security Council, after strong opposition to the U.S. plans by France and Russia, which can both veto any resolution on the body.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan even took the unusual step of criticizing the United States, amid what has been widely seen as a U.S. diplomatic failure to rally international support for an attack on Iraq.

Saddam on Wednesday said Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, which Washington originally claimed was the source of its concern over Baghdad after the September 11 attacks.

But Washington later said that eliminating such weapons was not enough and that Saddam, who has ruled Iraq with an iron first since 1979, must leave the country with the rest of the top Iraqi leadership.

Hours before the deadline, King Hamad of Bahrain offered asylum to Saddam.

U.S. forces have dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets on Iraqi troop positions, giving detailed instructions on how to capitulate and escape attack.

On Tuesday, a U.S. officer in Kuwait said 15 Iraqi soldiers had already crossed the border and surrendered, while a Kurdish official in northern Iraq said a number of Iraqis "with minor responsibilities" had defected.

Bush has linked Iraq to an "axis of evil" that includes next-door Iran as well as North Korea, and says Saddam is a tyrant who must be ousted as part of Washington's campaign against terrorism.

The Iraqis were defended by a once-proud army which the last Gulf War in 1991 and 12 years of economic sanctions have wittled down from a million-strong fighting force to about 400,000 troops, most poorly equipped and underfed.

But military experts said there remained a well-trained core that could still prove deadly to U.S. forces if, as expected, Hussein deploys them in and around his strongholds: Baghdad and his northern hometown of Tikrit.