| The United States and Britain unleashed their first daylight air strikes on Baghdad on Saturday after pounding it with a fearsome night blitz. Repeated air raids rocked Baghdad through the day after a devastating night bombardment that set off giant fireballs, thunderous explosions and mushroom clouds, reddening the sky in a major intensification of the three-day-old war. After the bombing rose to a new intensity in the Iraqi capital, U.S. forces said they had captured a vital crossing point over the Euphrates river, and were battling toward Iraq's second city of Basra in the south. A U.S. officer near Nassiriya, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, said forces trying to clear a path to the capital had secured a bridge over the Euphrates. "We've established checkpoints at both ends" of the bridge, he said. |