SADDAM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, April 4: US troops seized control of Baghdad airport on Friday, the US military said, securing a strategic base ahead of a decisive assault on the city to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

But Saddam defiantly called on his people to resist coalition forces closing in on the capital, and his information minister warned the troops at the airport could be the target of unconventional attacks during the night.

Elsewhere, around 2,500 Iraqi troops surrendered to US Marines advancing north on Baghdad from the town of Al-Kut, officials said, but three coalition troops were killed in an apparent suicide bombing northwest of the capital.

“The airport now has a new name, Baghdad International Airport, and it is a gateway to the future of Iraq,” Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters at the US Central Command’s forward base in Qatar.

Hours after troops from the US Third Infantry Division punched through the airport’s perimeter fence, mortar and small-arms duels rattled around a small corner of the facility, located 20 kilometres from the city centre.

Two soldiers were killed in the battle, and a third died, along with a columnist for The Washington Post, when their Humvee plunged into a canal after coming under Iraqi fire during the US advance, a military spokesman told AFP.

Earlier, US officers qualified the number of Iraqi casualties as “high”, as witnesses reported dozen of Iraqis had died. Forty prisoners of war were taken in the fighting, they said.

US troops searched buildings, cleared bunkers of munitions and prepared the runway for use by the US-British coalition, but Iraqi troops were feared to be hiding in a suspected network of underground tunnels.

“We don’t know what we’ll find there. They may in fact be someone to fight in those underground facilities,” Gen Brooks told reporters.

But he cautiously refused to set a timetable for an assault on the capital, saying it would “take time to gain a degree of control and security over ... all of Baghdad.”

Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf rejected US claims of victory at the airport, warning of unconventional attacks during the night against coalition forces, who he said were “completely surrounded”.

The battle for Baghdad airport, with US troops reportedly only 15 kilometres from the city centre, came as coalition war planes again pounded the capital.

Artillery and small arms fire were heard in the city, an AFP correspondent reported. It was the first time small arms fire had been heard in Baghdad, and it was not clear from where it came.

Power was restored to parts of Baghdad late Friday, after being cut the night before for the first time since the outbreak of hostilities.

Iraq has repeatedly warned the decisive battle will be in Baghdad, where it would engage US-led forces in dangerous street-to-street fighting. It also says it has thousands of volunteers ready to become “martyrs” in suicide strikes.

In northern Iraq, US-backed Kurdish fighters crossed a bridge near the strategic junction of Khazer on the road to Mosul after more than 24 hours of fierce clashes with Iraqi troops.

Mr Sahhaf said units of Iraq’s elite Republican Guard had clashed with US forces airlifted to Abu Gharib north of Baghdad, destroying six tanks and three armoured personnel carriers.

“This force is now isolated from the force airlifted to Saddam International Airport,” he said.

US officials said they had uncovered a suspected “training school” for nuclear, biological or chemical warfare in western Iraq, but admitted an initial probe did not suggest it was a site for the manufacture of the weapons of mass destruction that Washington and London accuse Saddam of harbouring.

UN aid workers also entered Iraq for the first time since their withdrawal last month, a senior World Food Programme official said.

On the diplomatic front, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are expected to meet in Northern Ireland on Monday to discuss the war, officials in Washington and London announced.

Iraq’s Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Baghdad would inflict a “resounding defeat on the aggressor,” and called on Arabs and Muslims across the world to defend Iraq.

The bombing of the capital on Thursday killed another 27 civilians, according to al-Sahhaf.

A hospital source said eight people were killed and five wounded when one missile hit a vegetable market on the edge of the city.

The US casualty toll also continued to mount, with US Central Command saying it was investigating reports of a fresh friendly fire incident involving US troops that left one soldier dead and several others injured.—Agencies