Reports said eight Abrams tanks entered the southern outskirts of Baghdad on a reconnaissance mission

Baghdad, April 5 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A U.S. tank commander was shot dead and at least four soldiers were wounded Saturday, April 5, during an incursion by some 30 U.S. tanks into southern Baghdad where they encountered fierce Iraq resistance, a senior U.S. officer said.

"We had one KIA (killed in action)," Colonel David Perkins, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Asked how he was killed, Perkins said the commander had sustained a "head wound."

An AFP correspondent reported that for the first time inside Baghdad, Iraqi fighters and U.S. forces clashed, claiming dozens of Iraqi military vehicles were seen burning.

A U.S. commander alleged that up to 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed in the fierce fighting.

Artillery fire could still be heard after the engagement on the edge of the Dora and Yarmuk neighborhoods in southwest Baghdad, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the centre.

"The fighting lasted from five to eight o'clock this morning (0100 GMT to 0400 GMT)," said Kamal, an electrician from the Yarmuk district.

"It was hell. We were on a battlefield. It was on the airport road about 10 kilometers from the airport…The firepower was incredible. There was no let-up in the firing for three hours. Machine gun fire, light artillery and RPGs (Rocket-Propelled Grenades)," he added.

U.S. Colonel Will Grimsley, commander of the First Brigade of the U.S. army's 3rd Infantry Division said elements of the division's Second Brigade had come under rifle fire and attack by RPGs.

He was reportedly speaking at Baghdad airport a day after U.S. forces seized control of most of the facility in their 16-day-old drive northward to topple the Iraqi regime.

However, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf repudiated the allegation, insisting that Anglo-American troops had been chased out of the airport.

"We have defeated them, in fact we have crushed them. We have pushed them outside the whole area of the airport…The Republican Guard is in full control of Saddam International Airport, " he asserted.

Despite U.S. claims that "substantial" forces were making their way through the city, there was no sign of U.S. forces in the area around the Tigris River, which flows through the center, foreign reporters on the ground confirmed.

Baghdad Woke To Incessant Bombing

Explosions early Saturday morning light up the sky over Baghdad

The Iraqi capital woke Saturday to continue heavy bombing concentrated as all night long on the outskirts, after a dramatic televised walkabout by President Saddam Hussein.

Loud explosions occasionally shook areas nearer to the center of the city overflown by U.S.-British warplanes, an AFP correspondent reported.

Despite the intensity of the bombing around the south rim and the breakdown of water and electricity supplies, Baghdadis were out and about and cars and buses were on the roads.

Just after 8:30 am (0430 GMT) the shockwaves of the blasts shook high-rise buildings in the heart of Baghdad.

The booms and ack-ack of anti-aircraft fire resounded virtually all night, but reporters could not immediately specify what targets were hit or the scale of the damage.

A relative calm had settled on the smoke-filled city around 7:00 am (0400 GMT) but it was not long before the bombardment resumed.

Fireballs were seen overnight from Baghdad's southwestern outskirts, site of the Saddam International Airport.

In a televised address, Saddam sought to galvanize his people calling on them to resist U.S. forces closing in on the capital.

His Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf issued an ominous warning that Iraq would carry out an "unconventional" attack against U.S. troops he said were "isolated" at the airport.

After the United States claimed that the sprawling airport on the western outskirts of the capital no longer bore his name, Saddam appeared on state television on a triumphant tour of battered Baghdad.

The uniformed Saddam, accompanied by his personal secretary, Abed Hmoud, in broad daylight, was repeatedly swarmed by the crowd, which chanted, "With our blood and our souls, we shall redeem you!"

It was impossible to know when the footage was recorded, but it was the first time he has been shown in public since the United States and Britain launched the war on March 20.

The walkabout was aired shortly after Saddam delivered a speech urging Baghdad residents, "Hit them with the power of faith wherever they come near you, and resist."

"Our martyrs will go to heaven and their dead will go to hell," he said.

The U.S. military tried to downplay the significance of Saddam's appearances.

"We find it interesting that Saddam Hussein, if he is alive, feels a need to walk in the streets to prove that," Major General Stanley McChrystal, vice director of operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington.

"What we don't see is effective command and control at his level," he claimed.