Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said on Tuesday that 56 civilians had been killed in Iraq in U.S.-led air raids over the past day.
These included 24 in Baghdad, 19 of them overnight and fivethis morning, he told a news conference.
He said the number of wounded rose to more than 250 people, more than 125 of them in the Iraqi capital. Among the casualties, he said, were nine children killed in an attack on a residential district of Hilla in central Iraq.
"This morning the villains have bombarded...the Naderdistrict in the southern part of the city. Nine Iraqi childrenwere martyred, among them one small baby," Sahaf said.
The minister said the invading forces were suffering increasing losses and would be defeated. "Day by day they are becoming more hysterical...They areracists, so they started killing the Iraqis...indiscriminately," he said.
Sahaf said Iraqi forces had shot down an Apache at Tarha near the southern city of Basra. He added that Basra, Iraq's second biggest city, remained firmly under Iraqi control, despite a lengthy siege by British forces.
Elsewhere, Sahaf reported continued fierce fighting at Nassiriya and Najaf on the Euphrates river. "(At Najaf) we destroyed seven tanks of those villains. The Saddam Fedayeen destroyed seven armoured personnel carriers," he said, adding that U.S. forces had had to retreat into the desert.
Sahaf has said that Iraqi forces had thwarted a landing by British troops near the oil hub of Mosul in the north of the country.
"The British forces which were dropped there have been eliminated mostly on the [battle]field, except for those who fled," he told a news conference, adding that the Iraqis had seized most of the invading troops' equipment and vehicles.
"It is a complete defeat... Amazingly the Americans have pushed the British to do that. They pushed them ahead as if it is an experiment. The result was very tragic for the British," Mr Sahaf said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
