A destroyed Iraqi tank rests near a series of oil well fires during the Gulf War, Saturday, March 9, 1991 in northern Kuwait. Iraqi troops needed just a few days and some plastic explosive to destroy more than 700 wellheads and turn Kuwait‘s oil fields into a desert inferno in 1991. Fears are growing that Saddam Hussein has taken time to organize a more meticulous sabotage of Iraq‘s own oil fields, a scorched-earth tactic that could cripple Iraqi production. PHOTO - TASR/AP

SOUTHERN IRAQ - U.S. armoured forces thrust deep into southern Iraq, meeting only sporadic resistance on Friday, and the United States said it still hoped to topple President Saddam Hussein without an all-out war. British commandos, in a seaborne assault, captured the Faw peninsula on Iraq‘s southern tip and seized control of key oil installations but U.S. marines met tougher resistance at the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, on the Kuwaiti border. Umm Qasr‘s old port had yet to be taken. Scores of Iraqis surrendered, some were killed.

U.S. military vehicles rolled across the desert, passing oil fields where Reuters reporter Sean Maguire said he saw towering flames and smoke. British Defence Minister Geoff Hoon said Iraqi troops had set up to 30 oil wells ablaze.

There was an interlude of quiet in Baghdad after another U.S. and British cruise missile volley rained down overnight. The sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayers rang out in grey dawn of the Muslim holy day, Friday. One of the targets struck by the missile salvo was Saddam‘s vast Baghdad palace complex on the banks of the Tigris River. Another housed an office of Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz. There was relatively little Iraqi anti-aircraft fire.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States still hoped a full-scale war could be averted to oust Saddam and destroy suspected weapons of mass destruction. About 280,000 U.S. and British troops are in the Gulf region for the assault on Iraq.

The invasion marked the first use of a new U.S. strategic doctrine of pre-emptively attacking any country seen to pose a threat. Washington says Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and could give them to terrorist groups. Iraq denies this.

As the ground war began, explosions and fireballs were seen towards Basra, Iraq‘s second city, whose port British forces said they aimed to capture — to open it to aid supplies. Military planners want to prevent Iraqi forces from torching oil wells, as they did in Kuwait in 1991. Although some were set on fire, Britain‘s Minister Hoon said that was less than had been feared. The British assault on Faw by Royal Marine commandos began before dawn with an airborne and amphibious assault on the coast to secure Iraq‘s main oil pipeline terminals.

In northern Iraq, a reporter for Qatar‘s al-Jazeera television said the city of Mosul had been rocked by explosions. U.S. and British troops sustained their first casualties of the war after a CH-46E helicopter crashed in Kuwait, killing eight Britons and four Americans. A U.S. military spokesman said the crash was apparently not caused by hostile action. The overnight raids in Baghdad were the second round of U.S. air attacks after Saddam defied an ultimatum from President George W. Bush to leave the country with his sons.

Following major protests in several countries on Thursday against the U.S.-led war, which has been strongly opposed by many countries including France, Russia and Germany, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets again in Australia.

Reuters