The United States finally unleashed its fury on Baghdad this evening, pounding the city with waves of air strikes that turned vast sections of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi capital into an inferno.
The streets of this ancient city vibrated with the explosions of high-tech weaponry, and thick smoke clouds choked the sky as uncounted bombs and missile after missile slammed into targets across Baghdad, including Saddam's main Republican Palace.
"A few minutes ago the air war in Iraq began," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington.
Tracer bullets from Iraqi anti-aircraft gunners shot across the evening sky but were facing a ferocious onslaught of the latest Western technology as Washington pressed its war to push Saddam and his inner circle from power.
It was impossible to count how many buildings had been hit. Balls of choking black smoke rose in the sky as Baghdad was repeatedly pounded, setting off a series of shock waves that shook walls and windows.
The Republican Palace, symbol of Saddam's iron grip on power since 1979, lay in flames. Other buildings, thought to be key government offices, were hit.
"Several hundred military targets will be hit over the coming hours," the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, said during the joint briefing with Rumsfeld.
Iraqi Defence Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmad was conducting a press conference in the centre of the city when the room was shaken by an intense wave of explosions whose roar nearly drowned him out.
But the defiant minister vowed: "No force in the world will conquer us because we are defending our country, our principles and our religion. We are, no doubt, the victors."
Air raid sirens gave residents just a few moments warning before the first missiles announced the US attack had begun in full.
It was the first time since the war began that reporters in the Iraqi capital had been able to see US fighter planes flying over Baghdad.
This city of five million had been bracing to feel the full wrath of American military might since early Thursday, when the United States began a war that it has pledged will not conclude before it sees the end of Saddam's 24-year reign.
After what had been a relatively calm weekly day of rest, with children playing football in the streets and their elders shopping for essentials, the first missiles began smashing into the city around 9:00 pm (6 p.m. Irish Time).
Reporters said several buildings in the Republican Palace compound were on fire after coming under intense and repeated bombardment.
At least six missiles appeared to have hit the compound after reporters said war planes had started up their engines and roared off from a US aircraft carrier, part of a huge US military presence at the ready, waiting in the Gulf.
More than 30 minutes after the assault began, the city was still under furious bombardment. Flames could be seen raging across Baghdad, visible even through the columns of smoke that marked target after target being reduced to rubble.
AFP