Baghdad digs deep as bombs fall and secret police circle

The people of Baghdad are digging in as American and British forces engaged Republican Guards south of the Iraqi capital. The city's residents have started carving bigger defensive trenches, including in the courtyard of the antiquities museum.

Overnight 30 explosions were heard in the city and the main television station was attacked, taking it off-air. But later this morning it resumed broadcasting.

American infantry troops fought off a desert offensive by Iraqi forces 100 miles south of Baghdad, inflicting heavy casualties in the biggest ground clash of the war yet.

US officials said that between 150 and 500 Iraqis were killed in the battle during howling sandstorms near the holy city of Najaf. There were no immediate reports of American casualties.

The American convoy had adopted defensive positions during the storms when Iraqis - either Republican Guard or paramilitary Iraqi troops traveling on foot - opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades.

Some of the 7th Cavalry's equipment was damaged in the attack, the officials said.

As the distant explosions around Baghdad grew more frequent, security and police officers fanned out across the city. Residents said members of Saddam Hussein's feared intelligence agencies were also posted on the streets.

President Saddam, meanwhile, sent a message to Iraq's tribal and clan chiefs asking them to step up the fight against the Allied forces. "Fight them in pockets and when their columns move, hit their front and rear," he told them, according to state television. "Those of you who have been reluctant to fight and are waiting for the order, consider this to be the command of faith and jihad and fight them."

Tribesmen and clansmen are believed to have already played an important part in fighting Allied troops in the south and Iraqi officials say they have been supplied with sophisticated weaponry.

"Inflict damage on them, and although it may not be big, you'll see how they will flee because they are away from home and because they are aggressors," President Saddam was reported to have said. State radio and television continued to broadcast patriotic songs and archive footage of the President.

The Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, said 15 people were killed in air raids on Monday night, which hit the intelligence headquarters and the sprawling defence complex. Tuesday's edition of Babil, a daily paper owned by President Saddam's son Uday, published pictures of decapitated bodies that it said belonged to Iraqi civilians killed in bombing raids. All newspapers' front pages carried the text of their leader's address to the nation on Monday.

Rubbish piled up in parts of Baghdad but buses were running normally and many shops were open.

Claiming eight coalition soldiers were killed and three armoured carriers destroyed in a battle in Suq ash Shuyukh, about 18 miles south of Nasiriyah, Mr Al-Sahhaf singled out an Iraqi woman named Mayssoun Hamid Abdullah as a heroine for hitting an armoured vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade. Iraqis "await surprises on how the American game of shock and awe will fail", he added. The Iraqi Trade Minister, Mohammed Mehdi Saleh, accused the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, the US and Britain of preventing food and medicine from reaching his country through the UN oil-for-food programme, saying: "America and Britain should not punish this great people with barbaric methods."

Nevertheless, he said the Iraqi government had distributed six months' rations to its citizens, and announced: "We assure them that we have enough food and medicine to confront the enemies."