Rumsfeld no to pause, bombs cut off phones

Speaking to ABC’s ‘‘This Week’’ programme, Rumsfeld said: The area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial…It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed.’’

Meanwhile, British Royal Marine commandos captured an Iraqi general and killed another senior officer in clashes with Iraqi paramilitaries south of Basra, a report disputed by Al Jazeera TV.

Five other Iraqis were captured in the same clash, and one Iraqi Republican Guard colonel was killed, he said. He gave no further details of casualties. Al Jazeera later quoted Lt Gen Walid Hamid Tawfiq, an Iraqi field commander in the Basra region, as denying that a general had been captured and a colonel killed.

A huge fire raged close to central Baghdad. It looked as though Iraqis had set alight an oil-filled trench, sending plumes of thick, black smoke billowing into the sky in a bid to hamper the air strikes. Telephone lines in Baghdad were badly disrupted after repeated strikes on telephone exchanges as Iraqis lost all touch with a diaspora numbering millions.

In Washington, the US military said it had also bombed an intelligence complex and surface-to-air missile sites.

The air raids also targetted other key cities. Explosions also rocked Mosul in northern Iraq and Basra in the south overnight. US-led forces with their supply lines increasingly vulnerable to attacks, halted their advance south on the ground in wait of fresh reserves even as Britain expressed concern about increase in casualties due to suicide attacks and street fights in the Iraqi capital.