BAGHDAD - US and British air strikes pummelled the Baghdad area again on Friday, as the coalition took advantage of a break in the bad weather to hammer crack Iraqi troops defending Saddam Hussein's capital.
Columns of smoke billowed in the sky following the assault by bombers and Tomahawk missiles, which began before midnight and continued into the early hours of the morning.
Telecommunications facilities in the city centre were among the targets hit in the latest wave of strikes, although phone service did not immediately appear to be affected.
The al-Ulwiyya telecommunications center on a main avenue in the central Saadoun neighborhood was destroyed.
Glass was shattered in nearby homes and shops while a gigantic billboard on the rooftop of an adjacent building was broken.
At the entrance to the telephone center, a large picture of President Saddam Hussein holding a rifle in front of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock mosque was still intact.
Telephone lines were however still working in the southern sector of the capital which is usually fed by al-Ulwiyya.
The al-Rashid telecommunications center for central Baghdad, located in the capital's oldest commercial street of the same name, had a large gaping hole in the wall of the ground floor.
Rubble blocked the main road, forcing cars to seek alternative routes.
On Thursday, the allied strikes destroyed the al-Maamun Communication Center located near the al-Nusur roundabout, next to the destroyed al-Salam palace in Saddam's presidential compound that has repeatedly come under US-British fire since the launch of the onslaught March 20.
Massive explosions shook the Baghdad hotel housing the international press corps around 0400 GMT, although the targets of those new raids could not immediately be identified.
"Visibility was as sweet as a nut," said British Flight Lieutenant Ian Townsend, who took part in an air attack on Iraqi armour outside the capital. "Baghdad has been in fog for the last two days but now it's wide open."
Officers aboard the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean said early Friday about 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles had been launched in the previous 24 hours.
Some 20 were fired from the Mediterranean and about 10 from the Gulf against targets they described as leadership and command and control facilities in Baghdad and other centres.
Stiffer than anticipated resistance from lightly armed Iraqi irregulars to the US-British ground push from the south has raised the specter of bloody street combat in the capital, as well as continuing attacks on US supply lines to the rear.
The leading edge of the US forces was expected to pause to rest, rearm and refuel while US air strikes soften the Republican Guards forming the defensive perimeter around the city, officials said.
Pentagon officials announced Thursday that the United States would more than double its ranks engaged in Iraq, with 120,000 troops ready to join the 90,000 already on the ground.
But Lieutenant General William Wallace, the top US army ground commander in Iraq, told The Washington Post that Iraqi tactics had stalled the drive toward Baghdad.
"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against," he said.
Iraqi Defence Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmad vowed that Baghdad would never fall to the coalition forces.
"Baghdad cannot be taken by the Americans or the Britons as long as the citizens in it are still alive," he said.
The official state news agency said Saddam had ordered Iraqis who find or capture a coalition vehicle "either to hand it over to the state or destroy it."
State television has shown a number of US and British vehicles abandoned in the southern desert, where coalition troops are meeting fierce resistance from Iraqi regular forces, militiamen and tribal fighters.
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