However, foreign correspondents reported that fighting raged in Baghdad Monday as U.S. troops thrust into the heart of the Iraqi capital, while Britain said "Chemical Ali", a feared ally of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, was believed to have been killed in the battle for southern Basra.

As battles flared at Saddam's sprawling Republican Palace and near al-Rashid hotel, U.S. tanks and armored personnel carriers reportedly sped in from the west to assault Saddam's symbols of power, while U.S. Marines advanced from the southeast.

The raid turned the center of the capital into a battlefield - thick smoke smeared the skyline and the smell of sulfur hung in the air as small-arms fire rattled around the city, scored by the booms of large explosions.

Pickup trucks loaded with Kalashnikov-toting militiamen, ammunition strapped across their chests, sped along the deserted main roads of the battered city.

U.S. officers described the incursion as a tactical raid to give a "powerful message" to the Iraqi regime, not the start of the much-expected final battle to seize the capital, one of Saddam's last strongholds.

As part of the "message," a tank blew a huge statue of Saddam off its pedestal in central Baghdad, U.S. military officials said.

Nine civilians were killed when a missile crashed into a residential neighborhood in central Baghdad Monday, witnesses told AFP.

The raid saw three battalions of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, comprising more than 100 tanks and fighting vehicles, push towards the western bank of the Tigris river.

They reportedly captured Saddam's main official residence in the heart of Baghdad, as well as another palace in the city center and a third near the airport, said Lieutenant Colonel Peter Bayer, the 3rd Infantry Division's operations officer.

"There are two palaces (in the city center), we own both of them," he said.

From the southeast, U.S. Marines entered Baghdad undeterred after Iraqi forces blew up two bridges on the Diyala River, which runs east of the Iraqi capital.

“We're in Baghdad and we're in Baghdad to stay," said Brigadier General John Kelly, assistant commander of the First Marine Division.

Pentagon spokesman Major Ben Owens said the raid was meant to send "a powerful message that we can go where we want, when we want ... We are not at this point going to say that this is the start of the Battle of Baghdad."

Two U.S. soldiers and two reporters were killed and some 15 people wounded when an army position south of Baghdad was hit in a rocket attack, according to US military sources at Baghdad airport.

Basra Front

In the south of the country, British invasion troops poured into the second largest city of Basra.

"The battle (for Basra) is more or less over now," Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Blackman of the 7th Armored Brigade said.

"We are covering all the areas of Basra, including the old city. There are soldiers and armored vehicles inside (the old city) right now."

Royal Marine commandos seized Saddam's presidential palace in Basra and other troops were in control of the city's main university after killing a dozen Iraqi militiamen holed up there.

British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said there was strong evidence that Ali Hasan al-Majid, the notorious Iraqi official better known as "Chemical Ali," had been killed in a coalition air strike three days earlier.

"We have some strong indications that he was killed in the raid conducted Friday night but I can't yet absolutely confirm the fact that he is dead. But that would be certainly my best judgment in the situation," Hoon told a London press conference.