A defiant Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appeared on television late Friday to exhort his people to resist the US-led forces, while his information minister said troops occupying the airport could be targeted for unconventional attacks overnight.

Iraqi television portrayed Saddam firmly in control, flanked by just a few bodyguards in a residential square, smiling broadly, accepting several kisses on his hand and holding a baby.

A televised address by Saddam earlier Friday seemed to clear up doubts by US intelligence on whether he had survived the thousands of missiles and bombs that have targeted the most sensitive sites of his regime.

Around 2,500 Iraqi troops surrendered to US Marines advancing north on Baghdad from the town of Al-Kut, officials said, but three coalition troops were killed in an apparent suicide bombing northwest of the capital Friday.

Hours after troops from the US 3rd Infantry Division punched through the Baghdad airport's perimeter fence, mortar and small-arms duels rattled around a small corner of the facility, located 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the city center.

Two soldiers were killed in the battle and a third died, along with a columnist for The Washington Post, when their Humvee plunged into a canal after coming under Iraqi fire, a military spokesman told AFP.

Earlier, US officers qualified the number of Iraqi casualties as "high," but witnesses reported dozen of Iraqis had died. Forty prisoners of war were taken in the fighting, they said.

US troops searched buildings, cleared bunkers of munitions and prepared the runway for use by the coalition, but Iraqi troops were feared to be hiding in a suspected network of underground tunnels.

"We don't know what we'll find there. There may in fact be someone to fight in those underground facilities," Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters at the US Central Command.

But he cautiously refused to set a timetable for an assault on the capital, saying it would "take time to gain a degree of control and security over ... all of Baghdad."

In his television address, Saddam urged the residents of Baghdad -- under continued heavy bombardment -- to resist the coalition's drive to his seat of power.

"Hit them with the power of faith wherever they come near you, and resist, O brave inhabitants of Baghdad," said Saddam, clad in military uniform and black beret.

Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf issued an ominous warning that Iraq would carry out a "not conventional" attack later against US troops "isolated" at the airport.

"I mean some kind of martyrdom, and there are very, very new ways which we are going to carry out," said Sahhaf, whose country says it has thousands of volunteers ready for suicide attacks.

The official INA news agency reported late Friday that two Iraqi women had carried out a suicide car bomb attack against coalition troops at a checkpoint northwest of the capital, 18 kilometers (11 miles) from Hadithah Dam.

The commander of British forces in the Gulf, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, told the BBC that Sahhaf could mean "an attack with chemical or biological weapons."

Or, he said, Iraqis could try to swarm the airport with a "human tide."

The roads to Baghdad were ablaze and little was left of the encampments of the elite Republican Guard guarding approaches to the capital, said a US Navy pilot who returned to his carrier from a bombing mission over Iraq's capital.

Loud explosions were heard in Bagdad's center before dawn Saturday in what appeared to be a fresh round of coalition air strikes, according to Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera.

Earlier, intense explosions were heard coming from southwest of the city in the direction of the airport, as bombs or missiles could be heard pounding Baghdad's outskirts relentlessly.

Smoke was also seen rising from an unidentified bombing target in the capital's southeastern suburbs.

Power was restored to parts of Baghdad late Friday, after being cut the night before for the first time since the war began.

Iraq has repeatedly warned that the decisive battle will be in Baghdad, where it would engage US-led forces in dangerous house-to-house fighting.

In northern Iraq, US-backed Kurdish fighters crossed a bridge near the strategic junction of Khazer on the road to Mosul after more than 24 hours of fierce clashes with Iraqi troops.

Sahhaf said units of Iraq's elite Republican Guard had clashed with US forces airlifted to Abu Gharib north of Baghdad, destroying six tanks and three armored personnel carriers.

US officials said they had uncovered a suspected "training school" for nuclear, biological or chemical warfare in western Iraq, but admitted an initial probe did not suggest it was a site for the manufacture of the weapons of mass destruction that Washington and London accuse Saddam of harboring.

In the south, British forces on the outskirts of the country's second city of Basra, where an estimated 1,000 Iraqi militiamen were still holding out, said they were ready to launch an offensive, but were awaiting the go-ahead from US Central Command.

On the diplomatic front, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are expected to meet in Northern Ireland on Monday to discuss the war, officials in Washington and London announced.

In Paris, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia called for the United Nations to play an early and important role in shaping post-war Iraq and warned of a possible humanitarian crisis in the country.

But US national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said in Washington "the coalition intends to have a leading role" because of the sacrifices they have made in the campaign to bring down Saddam.

"It would only be natural to expect that after having participated and having liberated Iraq with coalition forces, and having given life and blood to liberate Iraq," she said.

A US soldier was charged Friday with the murder of two of his comrades after rolling three or four grenades into two tents at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait on March 23.

Anti-war demonstrations raged on Friday, with 80,000 crowding the streets of New Delhi and 30,000 chanting "Death to Bush" and "Long Live Saddam" in the central Pakistani city of Multan.

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SPACE.WIRE