"There may be more setbacks for coalition troops," Straw said in a speech to the Newspaper Society annual conference.

"As the regime enters its final stages, we will encounter fierce resistance from those elements of the regime's apparatus of terror whose fate is tied to their tyrannical ruler," Straw said.

Prime Minister Tony Blair believes the war has entered its second phase of "steady advance" towards driving Saddam from power after having taken "a strategic grip on Iraq in the first days of the war," which began March 20, his official spokesman said.

The final push on Baghdad will begin "when we are ready and only when we are ready," the spokesman said after Blair met with his top ministers and military officials in the so-called war cabinet.

Straw said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power as he was a "scar on the conscience of the world."

"We will rid the world of a brutal dictator, and, in doing so, ensure that the long-suffering Iraqi people will emerge from the shadow of dictatorship into the light of freedom," Straw said.

He said that turning Iraq into a well-off, democratic nation in the post-Saddam era would take "years."

Straw said a UN-led conference might be needed to bring together Iraq's ethnic and religious groups -- its Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis -- to form a new state after the war.

Straw also said it was "increasingly probable" that Iraq was behind the attack on a civilian target in Baghdad last month.

"It's increasingly probable that this was the result of Iraqi, not coalition action," Straw said.

He was apparently referring to an attack on March 26 in Baghdad in which 14 civilians were killed and around 30 wounded as two missiles fell in a working-class market district.

He warned people against making "snap judgments on the basis of television pictures."

Even a the foreign minister was speaking there were new reports of massive civilian casualties being caused by allied bombing of Baghdad and its region. An official of the International Committee of the Red Cross described the results of Tuesday's bombing as a "horror".

Straw said a factor making people oppose the war may be that unlike Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic, "Saddam Hussein has conducted his reign of terror off-camera. So unlike Kosovo, Iraq has not pricked the world's conscience through our televisions screens.

"Saddam has waged a war, but a hidden one, against the Iraqi people.

"There are no TV cameras in Saddam's torture chambers or in the darkest corners of Baghdad. But the suffering and oppression are real.

"Until his long reign of terror is ended, Saddam Hussein will remain a standing affront to the ideals which underpin the foreign policies of the UK, the United States and our European allies," Straw said.

Concerning the market bombing, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon has also said the attack may have been caused by the Iraqi military.

"Although investigations continue into this tragic incident, it could clearly have been caused by fallout from the regime's anti-aircraft fire or the failure of one of the regime's own missiles," Hoon said.

Baghdad has said allied fire was responsible.

The United States acknowledged it might have killed some civilians with air strikes.

A statement by the US Central Command said coalition warplanes used precision-guided weapons to attack nine Iraqi surface-to-surface missiles and launchers that were placed in a residential neighborhood of Baghdad.

"Most of the missiles were positioned less than 300 feet (90 meters) from homes," said the statement. It made no direct mention of deaths in the text, but the headline read: "Civilian damage possible."

Any missiles used by Iraqi forces over Baghdad have been fired in an attempt to shoot down coalition planes and missiles, which have been pounding the city since March 20.

SPACE.WIRE