Fierce sand storms in Iraq are tonight holding up US-led forces in their advance to Baghdad as the coalition pummelled the outskirts of the capital with air strikes in an apparent bid to weaken Republican Guard units.
On the sixth day of the US-led war to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the allies reported gains in the south, saying they finally seized the key deep-water port of Umm Qasr on the Kuwaiti border and crossed the Euphrates river at the town of Nasiriyah to press northwards.
US President George W. Bush said the allies were "making good progress" and vowed that Saddam's regime would be overthrown but US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned the war was "much closer to the beginning than the end."
The outskirts of Baghdad took a battering again as night fell when a series of intense bombardments, clearly audible from the centre of the capital, appeared to target the southern suburbs where Republican Guard units are protecting the approach to Saddam's seat of power.
Allied warplanes were hear roaring high over the capital, but the aircraft were hidden by dark clouds from fuel trenches lit by the Iraqi authorities, apparently in a bid to foil the air strikes.
Iraqi state television and another channel run by President Saddam Hussein's son were knocked off the air on this evening by coalition air raids on Baghdad, TV sources have said.
Iraqi satellite television was still broadcasting normally.
The latest raids came around 9.15 p.m. (Irish time) on Tuesday. State TV as well as the youth channel run by Saddam's elder son Uday went off the air shortly after AFP reporters in the capital heard explosions from the raids.
The battle for Baghdad was nearing a critical phase, with US troops backed by Apache helicopter gunships primed for an all-out assault on the Republican Guard.
US officers said 30 to 40 Apaches, the US military's most fearsome attack helicopter, had made initial runs against Saddam's crack troops as the prelude to what could be an epic tank battle.
The US Army's Third Infantry Division was fewer than 60 miles south of Baghdad, field reports said, with the US 101st Airborne Division crawling up from the southwest and the Marines to the east.
But their advance through the desert was slowed by howling winds and swirling sand which dramatically reduced visibility.
A US Apache and a Black Hawk helicopter attached to the Third Infantry Division went missing in southern Iraq when visibility was cut to 100 meters said a senior US officer.
Further south, a sand storm disrupted critical helicopter operations by the 101st Airborne Division.
The determined resistance in the southern desert towns which US war planners believed would be a walkover has raised fears of what coalition forces could encounter in Baghdad.
Casualty tolls remained unreliable, with Iraq saying 16 civilians had been killed and another 95 wounded in allied bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities since Monday night.
British losses mounted to 18 troops - 16 from accidents - but US losses were undetermined.
AFP