Having sworn they would not engage in conventional battle, the Iraqis seem to be doing just that, reports Lara Marlowe, in Baghdad.
The Republican Guards were proud of their trophy, standing atop the M1-A1 Abrams main battle tank, waving their assault rifles, flashing the "V" for victory. "We hit three of them," a young lieutenant claimed. "One ran away. We already towed one." The Iraqi soldiers had attached a thick steel cable to the carcass of the Abrams.
A tracked armoured personnel carrier heaved away at the other end of the cable, but the dead tank didn't move. Resting on a bed of gravel, stones and chunks of asphalt, it tilted into a bomb crater, its conveyor belt-like tread dangling loose, its mesh equipment rack twisted.
The sand-coloured gun barrel, painted with the letters, "COJONE EH" was the only thing that appeared undamaged. "Cojones" is the Spanish word for "balls"; it was standard vocabulary for the former secretary of state, Ms Madeleine Albright. But yesterday, at the point where the Hillah, Karbala, Nassiriya and Basra highway reaches the southern tip of Baghdad, it seemed especially vulgar. By nightfall, the Iraqis had covered the tank in Arabic graffiti.
For two days, Americans and Iraqis have fought for this strip of motorway, which merges a few kilometres further on with the airport road. Both sides have made claims and counter-claims. US forces said they'd carried out "a patrol through the centre of Baghdad", which they also called a "thunder run".
But more than 200 foreign journalists in Baghdad found no evidence that US forces passed anywhere other than this southern perimeter of the capital, where a US column supported by Apache helicopters and F-16s made forays two nights in a row. Late yesterday, a US brigade was reported to be returning to the same area of south-west Baghdad.
Journalists "embedded" with US troops broadcast footage showing US forces in the airport, which has been fought over since the night of April 3rd. The Information Minister, Mr Mohamed Said al-Sahaf, has done some verbal pirouettes to explain how Iraqi forces "drove the Americans out" of the airport, back to Abu Ghoraib, site of an infamous prison.
"When we stopped pounding them with heavy artillery and missiles, they pushed forward to the area of Saddam Hussein International Airport, for the sake of propaganda," Mr al-Sahaf continued. "It has no military significance; it's only to show they are in the airport area."
Mr al-Sahaf delivered his daily briefing against a background of steady explosions. Asked what the detonations meant, he said, "What you are hearing - I don't know if it's their artillery or ours."
He said that Iraqi forces had destroyed 15 US tanks across the country in 24 hours. Iraqi authorities make such claims almost daily, but the Abrams on Al-Junub (South) Street was the first proof I'd seen.
One US tank seemed small compensation for the loss of the airport and the dozens of Iraqi artillery pieces, field guns, armoured personnel carriers and lorries that litter the southern motorway and Al-Junub Street. It wasn't clear exactly what happened to the Abrams, or its three-man crew, although the US admitted they'd suffered casualties.
"We hit it with a 106mm gun," the Republican Guard lieutenant said. "We took the three bodies away this morning."
The US said it killed up to 2,000 Iraqis in two days of battle; Mr al-Sahaf said the Iraqis killed 50 Americans, though when I asked him what happened to the bodies, he didn't know. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported up to 100 casualties were admitted to Baghdad hospitals every hour over the weekend.
How the Iraqis destroyed their prize tank remains a mystery. The Russian-made, jeep-mounted 106mm artillery piece may have hit the Abrams's ammunition locker, which would have exploded and blown out the crater. But the crater seemed to have been made by a gravity bomb. It's possible the Americans saved their crew, taking them into another vehicle in their column.
A US pilot allegedly said he'd bombed an American tank for the first time. According to this theory, the US wanted to destroy the disabled tank so the Iraqis could not use it.
I climbed onto the turret of the charred tank and looked inside, at what resembled a violently jumbled tool box, each geometrically shaped object coated in dark-grey ash.
At that moment, US jets came back. When their engines went into a screeching power dive - the sign the jet is about to bomb - the Iraqi beside me hurled himself to the ground. I scrambled down and ran for dear life, faster than I knew I could run. My hands were stained black from the burned metal.
Sheltering in the ground floor of an unfinished house, Republican Guard soldiers stood by in their steel helmets, nonplussed. Civilians from a nearby neighbourhood watched from the end of their street.
As we drove west, towards the airport road, it became apparent how unfavourable the ratio was to the Iraqis, perhaps 30 pieces of destroyed material for one US tank. The Americans had used small "Hellfire" type rockets to pick off vehicle after vehicle, field gun after field gun. The Iraqis lost a 155mm artillery piece.
A Katyusha multiple rocket-launcher was wrapped round a tree. An ammunition truck was annihilated - just a crumpled piece of metal, and blackened mortars scattered like bowling pins. Down a side street to the left, it looked like every house had been burned down. Further up the road, beyond the wreckage from yesterday's battle lay lesser but similar destruction from the day before.
Having sworn they would not engage in conventional battle with US forces, the Iraqis seem to be doing just that, sending hardware to confront the Americans as they enter the city. In a strange reversal, it is the Americans who are luring Iraqi forces out, then making "hit and run" attacks on them. If they want to preserve their artillery, vehicles and armour, the Iraqis will change tactics. But if the US wants to take the capital, it will have to do more than "probe missions".
In the meantime, there is still a surprising amount of traffic - I saw a red and white double-decker bus just a few kilometres from the front line. But there are armed men on most street corners, T-72 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and heavy machine guns waiting at strategic junctions. Military and civilians continue to co-exist. Dozens of police cars queued at a petrol station, along with ordinary Baghdadis.
A cigarette vendor placed his wares on the canvas top of a sand-bagged dug-out. A few families have been seen fleeing in cars loaded down with household goods on the north road - now the only exit from the city.