Heavy exchanges of fire in southern Baghdad intensfied in the evening, with artillery, mortar and rocket blasts and machine-gun fire heard loudly from the center of the capital, AFP correspondents said.

The firing, which began three hours earlier, seemed to intensify around 9:30 pm (1730 GMT) in the south and southeast of Baghdad.

Anti-aircraft batteries lit up the sky, which had been almost completely dark due to a power cut.

Loud explosions again rocked the capital of five million, as warplanes roared overhead and ambulance sirens wailed.

It was the first day mortar and rocket fire had been heard in Baghdad, whose airport US forces captured Friday.

Armed Iraqi paramilitary troops and policemen were heavily deployed in all Baghdad neighborhoods, with more trenches being dug along main roadways.

An AFP reporter who made a tour of southern Baghdad in the afternoon said the streets there were completely empty except for clusters of heavily armed soldiers and activists from the ruling Baath party at street corners, roundabouts and main roadways.

Earlier Sunday, about a dozen mortar bombs had struck in the busy Saadun commercial area in the heart of Baghdad and multiple rocket fire, sounding like Russian-made Katyushas, was heard by AFP correspondents in the city.

But Baghdad's residents, many of whom have moved to the countryside or with relatives in the city center that they perceive as less vulnerable to attack than the outskirts, seemed to be even more alarmed by a new 12-hour travel ban to and from their capital starting at 6:00 pm (1400 GMT) each evening.

Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf told reporters the measure was decided in order "to prepare our movements and our work to confront the enemy and crush him."

Sahhaf, like all Saddam's officials, insisted Sunday US forces did not control the airport and that Iraqi attacks since Saturday had "killed 50 soldiers in enemy ranks."

Sahhaf also denied casualties as important as reported by the US Central Command which said more than 2,000 Iraqi troops were estimated to have been killed in Friday's US armed incursion into southern Baghdad.

The incursion, meant as a "poke in the eye" to Saddam to show that US troops could come and go as they pleased, left debris of a number of Iraqi tanks and other vehicles still littering the main road where the battle took place.

Iraqi officials took journalists Sunday to see a destroyed US Abrams tank on the side of the highway connecting Baghdad to Kerbala, which they said was hit by an anti-tank rocket.

Ahmed Khoder, a member of the special Republican Guard, said the bodies of five people were inside.

Khoder said that one hour after the fighting, "President Saddam Hussein came to congratulate us and asked us to fight until the end."

But in an indication of the problems facing his troops, Saddam ordered Iraqi "fighters" to join any unit they can reach to battle coalition forces taking up positions around the capital, in an address broadcast Sunday on state television.

"Any fighter who is unable to join his unit for any reason, must join another available unit, until further orders," he said in a message read by a presenter.

Saddam has recently appeared frequently on television to show he was still in charge, chairing a meeting of top aides on Saturday and walking the streets of Baghdad the previous day.

With Saddam's stronghold under attack, Iraqi television on Sunday replayed footage of the leader's latest meeting.

Besides Uday, who heads the Saddam Fedayeen volunteer paramilitary force, and Qussay, leader of the elite Republican Guard, the meeting included Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed and Latif Nuseif Jasem, a member of the ruling Baath party's leadership.

The meeting was also attended by "a number of military commanders", whom the the television did not name.

In a speech read on his behalf Saturday by Sahhaf, Saddam told Iraqis the battered capital was still theirs to save.

No exact figures have been given for Iraqi civilian or military casualties, which are estimated to be in the hundreds.

But the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Sunday all Baghdad hospitals are stretched to their limits, warning of "alarming" situations in many parts of the country.

SPACE.WIRE