Beginning around 5:00 am (0100 GMT), explosions and artillery fire could be heard from the south as well as occasional blasts in the heart of the capital.

At least two massive explosions rocked central Baghdad just after midnight (2000 GMT Saturday).

The exact targets of the explosions were unclear, but the correspondent said the blasts were unusually powerful.

Explosions were still being heard half an hour later.

A missile plunged into the Tigris river late Saturday next to Saddam Hussein's main presidential palace, a frequent target, as a plane roared overhead.

As the battering of Baghdad has intensified, so have the appearances of the president in a propaganda drive to underline he remains in charge.

After a dramatic street walkabout on Friday, state television on Saturday night showed Saddam chairing a meeting of top military and political advisers, including his two sons, Uday and Qusay.

And in a speech read on television on his behalf by Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, Saddam told Iraqis Baghdad was still theirs to save.

"The enemy has concentrated all its forces against Baghdad, which has weakened its power in other parts of Iraq," Saddam said in the address.

"You must now weaken them (further), deepen their wounds and deprive them of what they have taken of your land, even though it is negligible, in order to reduce their chances and accelerate their defeat."

He added that Iraqis should "increase the number of attacks and go all out at the enemy to destroy them, following the orders in the written plans they have received.

"What has happened in Baghdad up until now is rather less than your Baghdad can put up with and God will protect it, even if it will have to cope with an even heavier burden.

"The enemy is lost (if they) believe they can heal the wounds they have already suffered by trying to attack Bagdad."

Sahhaf himself insisted to reporters Iraq had won back control of Baghdad's main airport with a deadly assault on US troops that included suicide attacks, a claim quickly denied by the Americans.

Sahhaf went on to tell Abu Dhabi satellite TV that Iraqi forces had killed more than 300 US troops in heavy fighting around the airport.

The minister insisted victory was near for Iraq.

"We have defeated them, in fact we have crushed them," he said of US and British forces. "We have pushed them outside the whole area of the airport."

However AFP correspondents saw dozens of Iraqi military vehicles burning on the streets after a battle near the road to the airport, which US Central Command said was "secure" and in coalition hands a day after its capture.

Artillery fire was heard several hours after the engagement on the edge of the Dora and Yarmuk neighborhoods in southwest Baghdad, about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the center.

"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."

US commanders said 30 tanks penetrated deep into the capital, coming under rifle fire and attack by rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). US officers said an American tank commander was shot dead and estimated some 1,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed.

But Baghdadis could find no sign of US troops in the heart of the capital, despite repeated claims by US officials that they were indeed there.

AFP correspondents chased down leads and rumors as they came in, darting from the campus of Baghdad University to Saddam Bridge over the Tigris River to Eagles Square, but each time found nothing.

Coalition combat aircraft began flying all-day patrols over Baghdad to provide close air support for US ground forces probing the capital, said Lieutenant General T. Michael Moseley, commander of the US-led air campaign.

SPACE.WIRE