BAGHDAD, April 5: First they were spotted at Baghdad University, then a hot tip had them on Saddam Bridge over the Tigris.

But try as they might, Baghdadis could find no sign of US troops in the Iraqi capital, despite the dramatic news that American forces had launched a bold early-morning poke into the city with 30 tanks.

Correspondents chased down leads and rumours as they came in, darting from the college campus to the bridge to Eagles square, in the southwest of the capital, but turned up each time empty-handed.

Several hours after the dash through the capital, burning Iraqi armoured vehicles testified to clashes with the Americans, but their tanks were long gone.

On the west bank of the Tigris river where most government buildings are based, quiet had returned after a tense morning, enforced by patrolling soldiers and other heavily armed men.

Many of them were seen heading toward Saddam International Airport, on the southwestern outskirts of the city, which US forces announced they captured Friday and now held “secure”.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al Sahhaf said earlier that President Saddam Hussein’s crack Republican Guard had driven coalition forces out of the facility.

“We have defeated them, in fact we have crushed them. We have pushed them outside the whole area of the airport.

“We will continue concentrating on those mercenaries until we slaughter them,” Sahhaf promised.

Navy Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman for the US Central Command, said earlier of the thrust into Baghdad: “This wasn’t a patrol — go in and come out.

“We had the opportunity and we moved in,” Thorp said. “It was done in a deliberate way. When we had the opportunity we took it and moved forward into the middle of the city.”

But the city seemed strangely normal by the afternoon, at least by Baghdad standards.

Iraqi militias manned trenches protected by sandbags at the two ends of Saddam Bridge and around Eagles square while police patrolled the university — waiting to defend against an invasion that never came.

Black-clad paramilitary Fedayeen units aboard a bus with the hood up to keep it from overheating were cheered by soldiers while they crossed Eagles square. Their assault rifles at the ready, the fighters punched the air with their fists, shouting slogans hailing the glory of President Saddam.

Soldiers and elite Republican Guard members and militiamen were posted at a major intersection leading out of the city, but appeared as steely nerved as ever.

While some militia fighters equipped with automatic weapons and anti-tank rocket launchers kept watch over city intersections, others were less visible, holed up in entrenched positions.

In the Dora and Yarmuk areas, in the southwest of the city, there were traces of combat earlier in the day, including smouldering cars and casings of heavy machineguns.

Even in the Al-Mamun district near the airport, motorists ventured out on roads and dodged burned-out vehicles, and then went about their business. —AFP