Saddam's presidential palace complex on fire

CHAMCHAMAL, Iraq, March 24 (News Agencies) – The United States staged its first air strikes on Iraqi frontlines between the key northern city of Kirkuk and Kurdish rebel-held town of Chamchamal early Monday, March 24, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent witnessed.

Shortly before 10:00 am (0700 GMT), jets were heard screaming overhead and six massive explosions were seen on an Iraqi-held ridge just 1,500 meters (yards) from Chamchamal, a frontline town controlled by the pro-U.S. Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The force of the blasts blew out windows here and, amid the huge plumes of black smoke thrown up on the ridge, Iraqi troops could be seen dashing from bunker to bunker.

Jets could be heard roaring through the skies following the strikes, the first sign of action on this key northern front.

Normally home to some 10,000 people, Chamchamal lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the oil city of Kirkuk and has been reduced to ghost town by a mass exodus of residents fearful of bitter fighting across the frontline.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi regime emerged Monday from a new battering by U.S.-led air raids, which sent dozens of explosions booming across Baghdad and Mosul after the world saw U.S. pride humbled by the first images of American dead and prisoners of war.

Baghdad was rocked late Sunday and early Monday by the most intense bombardment of the capital in 48 hours and huge clouds of smoke rose over the city in the morning.

Air sirens sounded in the Iraqi capital again at 9:40 am (0640 GMT), AFP correspondents reported.

There were no immediate explosions or bursts of anti-aircraft activity around Baghdad.

The Qatari satellite channel, Al-Jazeera also reported that the main northern Iraqi city of Mosul was rocked by three fresh U.S.-led air raids on Monday, the last of which hit at about 7:20 am (0420 GMT).

Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries opened up during the first two raids, the network's correspondent said, without being able to give specific information on the targets.

The strikes came as U.S. forces were reported to be closing in on Baghdad after moving past stiff resistance in southern Iraq and suffering their first significant losses in the Euphrates river town of Nasiriyah.

The morning bombing was not preceded by the usual air raid sirens, and anti-aircraft guns did not go into action.

The assault came after frightened-looking U.S. soldiers were paraded before the cameras of Iraqi television, prisoners of war put on display in a show aimed at humiliating Washington and rallying support for Iraq in the Arab world.

Al-Jazeera television first broadcast the Iraqi television footage, which also showed the bodies of what looked like dead U.S. soldiers.

The corpses lay stretched in a makeshift morgue, grisly red stains soaking through their desert-colored camouflage uniforms. The body of one young soldier rested in a thickening pool of blood. Some appeared to have been shot in the head.

The Iraqi television commentator said it was proof the United States "does not respect its sons and is not working to guarantee them a stable life, but is sending them into a holocaust."

The footage then showed five captured soldiers anxiously answering questions with an Iraq TV microphone shoved in their face.

"Why did you come to Iraq?" a voice off screen was heard asking one young soldier, who nervously turned his close-shaven head back and forth from the camera to someone not in view.

"Because I was told to come here," he said. "I didn't come here to kill anybody."

Another, from Texas, was asked if he had been greeted in Iraq with flowers or with guns. "I do not understand," he replied. One of the three others was a woman.

Just minutes after Al-Jazeera first broadcast the pictures worldwide, the Pentagon admitted that around 10 U.S. soldiers had been taken prisoner. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called it "part of Iraqi propaganda."

Iraq said the troops had been killed in fierce fighting in the southern city of Nasiriyah, where it claimed 25 U.S. and British soldiers were dead and an unspecified number wounded in the worst known coalition setback so far.

Britain said none of its troops had been taken prisoner in Iraq but that two British airmen were killed by friendly fire from a U.S. Patriot missile.

Throughout day four of the U.S.-led war, Iraqi officials vowed coalition troops were headed to their doom even as reporters traveling with ground forces reported they were speeding over the desert and now just 100 km (60 miles) from Baghdad.

"We let them go for a walk in the desert, but all our towns will resist," Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan said. The area of Ramadan's Baghdad office was pounded in the night-time raid.

U.S. President George W. Bush vowed that anyone who did not treat POWs under the Geneva conventions would be later dealt with as war criminals. Iraq said it would respect the conventions.

The International Committee for the Red Cross said the broadcast of the soldiers was a violation of the international rules of war.

But the images of U.S. prisoners will have renewed the spirit of Saddam's true believers in Baghdad, where U.S. officials said more than 300 cruise missiles fell in Friday night's "shock and awe" assault alone.

Rumors that U.S. or British pilots had ejected over the city brought hundreds of onlookers to the banks of the Tigris River, where the airmen were alleged to have been hiding out.

The coalition denied the report but that was far from enough to stop the quest for the men, who would win their captors a massive cash reward from Saddam's government.