BAGHDAD, March 21: The United States unleashed its full military might against Iraq on Friday with waves of air strikes that turned much of Baghdad into an inferno, as Washington declared President Saddam Hussein was “finished”.

A naval commander said 320 missiles were fired at Baghdad and surrounding areas.

US-led forces pounded Iraqi targets with thousands of guided weapons in a pulverizing “Shock and Awe” blitz designed to force the Iraqi regime to surrender. In a statement the Pentagon hinted it planned to hurl 15,000 bombs over Iraq on Friday night and Saturday.

“A few minutes ago the air war in Iraq began,” US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said as US bombers rained missiles and bombs on targets in the Iraqi capital, including President Saddam’s Republican palace.

“The regime is starting to lose control of their country,” Mr Rumsfeld claimed, barely 40 hours after the United States and Britain launched their invasion to unseat Saddam.

The United States was using “striking force to make clear to Iraqis that he and his regime are finished”, he said.

Huge explosions rocked the ancient city of five million people, sending balls of flames and thick clouds of smoke into the sky and setting off shock waves that shook walls and windows.

Defiant in the face of the ferocious onslaught, Iraqi Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed vowed that no force would break Iraq, which came under attack after President Saddam spurned a US ultimatum to go into exile.

“No force in the world will conquer us because we are defending our country, our principles and our religion. We are, no doubt, the victors,” Mr Hashim said, his voice sporadically drowned out by violent explosions.

The massive blitz followed a ground assault in southern Iraq that saw US and British forces seize a key port and move to the outskirts of Basra, the biggest city in the south and a key prize.

Other Iraqi cities also came under air attack on Friday night, with US officials warning that several hundred targets would be hit in the coming hours.

Al Jazeera television said there was a raid on Mosul, in the north, and there was also anti-aircraft fire around the key northern oil city of Kirkuk.

Until Friday evening there had been only limited raids, mainly aimed at the Iraqi president, whose compound was the target of the first air strike before dawn on Thursday.

Speculation about his fate swirled on Friday, with US media suggesting he had been injured.

Nearly 300,000 US and British troops, including 180,000 in Kuwait, have been deployed to fulfil US President George Bush’s vow to oust Saddam, who has ruled Iraq since 1979.

GROUND ASSAULT: The US and British forces claimed success in their ground assault after crossing into southern Iraq from Kuwait on Thursday night.

The chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Gen Richard Myers, claimed on Friday that US-led ground forces had advanced about 160kms into Iraq.

“At this stage our ground forces pushed about 100 miles into Iraq,” he said at a Pentagon news conference.

British armed forces chief Admiral Sir Michael Boyce said the joint forces had seized the strategic port of Umm Qasr, in the south of the country, where there was heavy fighting, and were poised on the outskirts of Basra.

They ran into pockets of resistance in the race to take control of oilfields and suffered their first casualties when two Marines were killed in action and eight British and four US soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Kuwait.

Boyce also said several hundred Iraqi soldiers had been taken prisoner.

Basra, which had been defended by a Republican Guard division, is considered a key prize, vital to Iraq’s economy because it controls the country’s oil terminals in the Gulf and its only access to the sea.

OIL WELLS CONTROL: Oil wells in southern Iraq will be secured “later today” by US and British forces, Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said on Friday.—AFP