Captain Andrew Valles, spokesman for the 1st Brigade of the US army's 3rd Infantry Division, speaking to an AFP correspondent inside the airport compound, said "the only Republican Guard soldiers I've seen are either dead or captured."

US troops preparing for their assault on central Baghdad, seized control of Saddam International Airport on Friday night.

But Sahhaf insisted during a press conference Saturday that Iraqi forces were still controlling the strategic facility, after a succesful counter-attack.

"The Republican Guard is in full control of Saddam International Airport," Sahhaf said.

"We have defeated them, in fact we have crushed them. We have pushed them outside the whole area of the airport.

"The whole trend has been changed. The operation is moving in our interests and I think we are going to finalise soon."

Sahhaf said suicide attacks had been launched on the American forces, part of the "not conventional" methods he predicted on Friday.

"We will continue concentrating on those mercenaries until we slaughter them," Sahhaf promised.

"Yesterday we nailed them down and since dawn we are attacking them and they are surrounded."

He claimed that while the American forces had been unable "to establish connection with other columns", they were still "firing from time to time with light artillery".

Sahhaf also announced: "We have destroyed four armoured personnel carriers and we have shot down an American warplane and a Cobra helicopter," adding "they have admitted that."

US commanders acknowledged that a Cobra helicopter had come down in Iraq with the loss of two air crew. US officers also said that a tank commander was killed and two other service personnel wounded in a dawn drive on the heart of Baghdad from the airport.

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