Baghdad was rocked by intense coalition bombing Thursday night after a day marked by explosive rhetoric from Iraqi officials inside the country and at a U.N. meeting in New York City.
As Thursday morning's blue skies signaled the end of the sandstorms that have disrupted American air operations in recent days, Baghdad residents braced for another round of aerial attacks. The sky was darkened again as the Iraqi soldiers reignited fuel trenches.Bombing commenced in the afternoon with explosions heard in and around the city. Witnesses reported that a number of people were killed in an attack on a housing complex for employees of a weapons production facility.
The attacks escalated after nightfall, as the bombing of one of Saddam Hussein's presidential compounds in central Baghdad brought the city its most powerful blast in several days.
Hours earlier, Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed delivered defiant rhetoric at a news conference in the Iraqi capital. "The enemy must come inside Baghdad, and that will be its grave," he said. Ahmed suggested that Iraqi military planners hope to draw coalition troops into urban warfare to inflict as many casualties as possible.
In addition to bombs, coalition forces dropped more paratroopers into northern Iraq to join the 1,000 soldiers who parachuted into the area during Wednesday. These troops face two main tasks: securing airfields in preparation for airlifts to aid a southern push towards Baghdad and seizing the valuable Kirkuk oilfields. Nearly 50 percent of Iraq's oil is pumped from wells in Kirkuk and nearby Mosul.
Elsewhere in Iraq, badly needed aid shipments were held up as officials ordered another sweep of the harbor outside the city of Umm Qasr for mines. This report came as a setback after the first food aid of the war rolled into the strategic port city the day before.
Back in the United States, American U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte walked out of a U.N. meeting in New York City after an Iraqi diplomat accused the United States of attempting to wipe out the Iraqi people.
Negroponte walked out of the meeting dramatically after Al-Douri accused the American government of handing out contracts for a post-war Iraq six years ago. Of 80 speakers from all over the world that participated in the UN debate, only 12 spoke in favor of US action. The vast majority opposed the war.
Joining those voices of opposition were hundreds of protesters, who temporarily closed traffic between 49th and 50th streets by staging a "die-in" intended to symbolize killed Iraqi civilians. 215 demonstrators were arrested following this act of civil disobedience.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
