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Friday, March 21, 2003

By Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- At 8:50 p.m., the air raid sirens sounded. For nearly 20 minutes, Baghdad was a city suspended. It waited, as it has for days. It watched. And then a sledgehammer broke the silence.

An explosion thundered over the capital from the heavily defended south, marking the second airstrike of the day. Car alarms went off, and a lone taxi raced past a sculpture of a flying carpet along the banks of the Tigris River.

Within minutes, the harsh rumbles of modern war shook the city. Antiaircraft guns sent volleys into the air. Red tracer rounds arced across the sky. Like blinking stars, flashes flickered in the darkness of an overcast night. On the horizon, a quick series of explosions sent up shimmering light, illuminating a weary Iraqi capital that had braced for war for months and now has found itself living through it once again.

Just as the brief but intense morning attack gave way to a day of calm, the nighttime attack subsided within an hour. Quiet returned. The "shock and awe" promised by the Pentagon had not yet come. But residents braced for the massive attack that many feared was still on the way.

Soon after the explosions began to echo, the 10-story office of Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was in ruins on the west bank of the Tigris, in the Old Presidential Palace that serves as President Saddam Hussein's formal seat of power. Four stories of the building burned late into the night, the blaze reflecting off the Tigris. Set off by at least two hits, the fire sent a stench of burning fuel into the air as far as a mile away.

There was no immediate report on the whereabouts of Aziz, one of the government's most recognizable figures and long its spokesman abroad.

The evening attacks ended a day in which Iraqi officials, in green khaki uniforms and black berets, appeared emboldened by the apparent failure of U.S. forces to kill Saddam in the first strike. More than 40 cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs had rained down on a neighborhood where Saddam was believed to be hiding, U.S. officials said. A government spokesman said in a statement on Iraqi radio last night that the attack targeted the private homes of Saddam, his wife and his three daughters.

A building near the Old Presidential Palace, said to house part of the Planning Ministry, also erupted in flames after last night's strike. But the brunt of the missile volley appeared to hit Republican Guard strongholds outside Baghdad, an impression confirmed by U.S. officials in Washington.

In a statement carried on Iraqi television, the armed forces command said the U.S. military had fired 72 cruise missiles during the day, killing four soldiers and wounding five. The military said it had shot down many of the incoming missiles but provided no figures. It also acknowledged firing missiles at Kuwait and said it had repulsed what it called an enemy attack on Anbar, a desert province that extends to the border with Jordan 300 miles to the west.

Throughout the evening strike, Iraqi television played patriotic songs and aired footage of goose-stepping soldiers and images of Saddam firing a rifle into the air, waving to crowds and walking through Iraq's most sacred shrines. State radio's song list was interrupted every so often by appeals for Iraqis to resist a U.S. invasion and trust that God is on their side.

"We are from a storied nation, noble and generous," a woman's voice cried out on the radio. It was followed by another appeal: "Yes, yes, to Saddam Hussein."

Saddam appeared on state television three hours after the dawn attack meant to kill him and his two sons, Uday and Qusay. He looked so haggard and pale that some Baghdadis speculated that the appearance might have been by a double. But Saddam referred to the attack having taken place at dawn, suggesting that the address was genuine.

Playing on a theme that has come to dominate his speeches, he laced his statement with religious references and Koranic citations. He appealed to Iraqis' history as a source for resistance. And, as in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he invoked the struggle over Palestine and fashioned himself as its defender.

"Long live jihad! Long live Palestine!" he declared.

While he suggested that Iraq could not defeat U.S. forces with their technology, he promised that a war of attrition could bring victory by exhausting them, a common theme among Iraqi officials who insist that the United States is overconfident.

"We pledge to you in our name, in the name of the leadership, in the name of the Iraqi people and its heroic army and in the name of Iraq, its civilization and history, that we will fight the invaders," Saddam said, speaking from notes and wearing heavy-framed black glasses, which he rarely does in public. "God willing, we will take them to the limit where they lose their patience and any hope to achieve what they planned and what the Zionist criminals have pushed them to do."

In past days, the tone of official Iraqi pronouncements has become increasingly angry, even desperate. Saddam and others have derided President Bush as an outlaw and war criminal. In news conferences, they dismiss him as the "little Bush." The rhetoric was no different yesterday. Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf said the attempt on Saddam's life "proves they are killers and criminals."

Sahhaf said at least one civilian was killed in the attack; hospital officials said 14 were wounded.

The government has searched for rallying cries to mobilize a population weary after two wars since 1980 and more than a decade of debilitating U.N. sanctions. Saddam, a once steadfastly secular leader, has increasingly turned to religious symbolism for legitimacy.

Other Iraqi officials portray the United States as violating an international consensus against war.

But for days, anxiety has run deep in Baghdad, where the 1991 Gulf War and that destruction wrought by the U.S. air campaign still cast a long shadow. Residents had deserted the city's streets as early as Wednesday, bracing for the expected attack. When yesterday's morning attack ended two hours later, there was almost a collective sigh of relief.