One US tank commander was shot dead on the drive by some 30 tanks deep into the capital, a senior American officer admitted.

The fighting took place in a Baghdad area close to the airport road, an AFP correspondent reported.

Artillery fire could still be heard several after the engagement on the edge of the Dora and Yarmuk neighborhoods in southwest Baghdad, about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the centre.

"The fighting lasted from five to eight o'clock this morning (0100 GMT to ," said Kamal, an electrician from the Yarmuk district.

"It was hell. We were on a battlefield. It was on the airport road about 10 kilometres from the airport.

"The firepower was incredible. There was no let-up in the firing for three hours. Machine gun fire, light artillery and RPGs (Rocket-Propelled Grenades)."

Iraqi army trucks, armoured personnel carriers as well as jeeps mounted with anti-aircraft gunners were abandoned, some burning and others smoking on the main road leading to the Dora electricity station and nearby side streets.

Soldiers and armed paramilitary elements were deployed in the area, diverting traffic on roads blocked by overturned burning trucks.

US Colonel Will Grimsley, commander of the First Brigade of the US army's 3rd Infantry Division said elements of the division's Second Brigade had come under rifle fire and attack by RPGs.

He was speaking at Baghdad airport a day after US forces seized control of most of the facility in their 16-day-old drive northward to topple Saddam's regime.

"It's called 'let me poke you in the eye because we can and you can't do anything about it'," the colonel said, adding that the move "started at first light."

The Iraqi capital had woken Saturday to continued heavy bombing concentrated as all night long on the airport area, after a dramatic televised walkabout by President Saddam Hussein.

Two cluster bombs dropped on the Iraqi capital overnight left eight people wounded, residents told AFP.

Small bomblets were scattered over a courtyard between several brick buildings and parents were trying to keep children away.

"Two bombs landed on our area about 3:00 am (2300 GMT Friday), then there were two missiles," said 35-year-old Samir, who lives in the al-Baladiyat quarter in the southwest of the city.

Most of the 50,000 residents of the quarter are from Palestinian families who fled the northern port of Haifa in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war.

Despite the intensity of the bombing around the southern rim and the breakdown of water and electricity supplies, Baghdadis were out and about and cars and buses were on the roads.

In a televised address, President Saddam Hussein sought to galvanise his people, calling on them to resist US forces closing in on the capital, after the US military said it had seized Baghdad's international airport.

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

A defiant Saddam was shown accepting kisses on Baghdad streets.

The uniformed Saddam, accompanied by his personal secretary, Abed Hmoud, in broad daylight, was repeatedly swarmed by the crowd, which chanted, "With our blood and our souls, we shall redeem you!"

It was impossible to know when the footage was recorded, but it was the first time he has been shown in public since the United States and Britain launched the war on March 20 aimed at toppling him.

The walkabout was aired shortly after Saddam delivered a speech urging Baghdad residents: "Hit them with the power of faith wherever they come near you, and resist."

"Our martyrs will go to heaven and their dead will go to hell," he said.

The official news agency INA, meanwhile, said a suicide attack against US troops was carried out by two women, whose testimonies were aired on the Arabic-language satellite television Al-Jazeera.

"I vow ... to be a suicide bomber who will defend Iraq," said one of the women, named as Nur al-Shammari, seen raising a rifle in the air and with her other hand placed on a Koran, the Muslim holy book.

"We are going to take revenge on the enemies of the nation, Americans, imperialists, the British and Arabs that gave themselves over to foreigners," she warned.

US Central Command said three coalition soldiers, a pregnant woman and her driver were killed in the explosion Thursday night at a checkpoint near Hadithah Dam, about 200 kilometres (120 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

SPACE.WIRE