A hungry little puppie tries to get find food beside heavy armored vehicles of the 3rd Infantry division of the US Army after the combat engineers secured an important two- lane bridge over the Euphrates river about 20 km outside Baghdad to push the 3rd infantry‘s convoy of more than 3000 vehicles towards the city April 4, 2003. US forces from the 3rd Infantry division pushed to the southern outskirts of Iraq‘s capital Baghdad and Saddam international airport during the night. FOTO - REUTERS

NEAR BAGHDAD - U.S. armoured units thrust almost unopposed on Thursday to 10 km from the edge of Baghdad and planes pounded targets in and around the Iraqi capital in preparation for an assault on the airport. Parts of four elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions were moving south, U.S. officers said, setting up a potential showdown for the capital — the key prize in the two-week-old U.S. and British war to topple President Saddam Hussein.

But U.S. and British political and military leaders said urban warfare in Baghdad could be prolonged and bloody and refused to be drawn on when they might authorise a final push to capture the city of five million people.

Reuters correspondents with U.S. troops quoted military sources as saying forward units of the 3rd Infantry Division were 10 km from the southern outskirts of the capital, which Saddam has vowed to defend street by street. Iraq denied it.

In central Baghdad, Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul reported more than 10 powerful explosions from the direction of the airport and later heard a new barrage of artillery fire and anti-aircraft fire from the area around the airport. Baghdad and its outskirts had also been heavily bombed overnight.

The United States admits it has used them in Iraq; Britain says it has them, but would not use them in built-up areas; Iraq says they have killed dozens of civilians; and human rights groups insist they should be banned. Cluster bombs are deadly but unpredictable — each contains over 200 bomblets the size of a drinks can which scatter over an area the size of two soccer pitches, most exploding on impact and capable of tearing through quarter of an inch of steel. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf accused U.S. forces of dropping cluster bombs on the Douri residential area of Baghdad, killing 14 people and wounding 66. A day earlier, Dr Sadid Moussawi, at a hospital in the medieval city of Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad, said 33 Iraqi civilians had been killed and more than 300 wounded in U.S. air raids on a residential area using cluster bombs.

Although U.S. officials said on Wednesday front-line troops had crossed a „red line“ into areas where Iraqi forces might be most likely to use poison gas, Reuters correspondent Luke Baker saw signs the threat was now perceived to be easing. U.S. and British leaders have cited Iraq‘s alleged possession of chemical and biological weapons as the reason for the war. Saddam denies having such weapons.

In Brussels, European Union and NATO foreign ministers looked ahead to the postwar period, telling U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that Washington must make room for the United Nations to help run Iraq. Powell said NATO members had shown a willingness to consider a role in post-war Iraq if the need arose, but that the United and Britain had to play a leading role in the future of Iraq.

Reuters