WASHINGTON, March 20: President Saddam Hussein on Thursday addressed his nation just hours after a series of strikes by the US military against senior Iraqi leaders and urged his people to resist the coming US assault, and lambasting President Bush for his decision to go to war.

“The criminal junior Bush has committed the crime he has threatened Iraq and humanity with,” Saddam said.

The US-led war, he declared, was an attack by “the criminal Zionists and their American allies” on the Arab and Islamic nations.

Mr Saddam appeared on Iraqi television more than an hour after his aides announced that he would address the nation, following a series of strikes apparently aimed at killing him and other senior Iraqi leaders.

Although he made reference to the date, there was no indication of whether the broadcast was live or had been recorded earlier, perhaps before the US strikes.

Wearing a military uniform and a black beret and flipping pages as he read from a note pad, Saddam urged the Iraqi nation to “fight American criminals with all the might you have.”

“Draw your sword, draw your gun, keep your fingers on the trigger and fight,” he declared.

“We must do everything to defend our valued nation and our principles, but I would say to the faithful, the patient, oppressed by the aggressors, to remember that these days will soon be over with the help of God,” he said.

“God will give us victory,” he said.

He called the US-led military coalition that also includes Britain and Australia “enemies of humanity and God.”

“We will confront the invaders and we will get them, God willing, where they will lose their patience and lose any hope of accomplishing what they were driven to by the criminal Zionists,” Saddam said.

Shortly before his speech, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf appeared on television, announcing that “the president, the leader, the fighter, Saddam Hussein, may God protect him, will shortly address the nation, in this fighting day, in this great day.”

Several times in his speech, Saddam addressed President Bush as “the tyrant of this era, the Zionist ally of this day,” in an attempt to link the war in Iraq with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Referring to a Muslim religious injunction that says, “you can only fight those who attack you,” Saddam said: “Those who are attacked and are treated unjustly have permission to fight.”