The footage, shot by an Associated Press cameraman and shown on CNN and the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera, shows US soldiers and tanks patrolling a battle-scarred landscape after an assault on the barracks of the elite troops.

But Sahhaf claimed to Al-Jazeera that the scene was from Abu Ghreib, some 35 kilometres (more than 20 miles) southwest of the Iraqi capital.

"These images are not the suburbs of Baghdad," he said, extolling the channel to tell its viewers "the truth."

"From what I glimpsed, these gardens with rows of palm trees on the side, which you saw in the images, are located in the south of Abu Ghreib, where we have surrounded the Americans and British," he said.

US forces entered Baghdad Saturday for the first time since the start of the war, but US and Iraqi officials gave conflicting accounts of events.

US officials said they had pushed into the "heart" of the Iraqi capital. A US commander said around 1,000 Iraqi troops had been killed in the drive, and an AFP reporter saw dozens of Iraqi military vehicles burning in the streets.

US officials also said dozens of tanks rumbled into the city a day after the Americans seized control of the airport to the southwest. But it was not clear how many remained in Baghdad or what was their strategic objective.

However, Iraqi satellite television said Iraqi forces had killed hundreds of coalition troops south of Baghdad.

SPACE.WIRE