Explosions rocked Baghdad at dawn this morning as the United States launched a war to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The explosions began about 3.30 am Nigerian time

Jets roared overhead, Iraqi anti-aircraft batteries opened up and air raid sirens sounded, said Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki, reporting from the city center.

The United States said the attack on Iraq had begun, just 90 minutes after its deadline for the president to quit Iraq had passed. The deadline expired 2.00 am Nigerian time.

President Bush announced he has ordered the attack on Iraq to begin.

"American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger," Bush said.

He said the first strikes were against "selected targets of military importance.

Bush, accusing Saddam of hiding chemical and biological weapons, set the ultimatum for him to flee into exile or face war with U.S.-led forces.

Ladki said the first blasts seemed to come from the southern and eastern suburbs. Heavy plumes of black smoke billowed from the east after the same target appeared to have been hit three or four times. Several explosions later hit the city center.

"I clearly heard two to three explosions and warplanes flying over at around medium altitude," Ladki said in his first report. He heard a further four explosions, apparently in the city center, some minutes later.

A few cars moved hurriedly on otherwise deserted streets. Air raid sirens began wailing out within a minute of the first strike. Electricity was still working in the city center.

Iraqi radio went off air after the explosions -- and appeared to have been taken over by the U.S. military, broadcasting in Arabic on the same frequency.

There was no sign the Iraqi president had complied with Washington's demands when Bush's 48-hour ultimatum ended.

The Iraqi capital had taken on the air of a ghost town on the eve of the deadline. Shops and restaurants were shut and the streets deserted.

Trenches have been dug and sandbags placed around official buildings and handfuls of militiamen with Kalashnikov rifles posted outside in recent days.

To the south, where U.S. and British forces are massed on the ground in Kuwait and aboard ships in the Gulf, there was little sign of an increase in activity overnight on the ground.

Reuters correspondent David Fox, in northern Kuwait close to the Iraqi border, said there had been little movement among the troops, who number more than 280,000 in the region as a whole.

Some combat units had moved into the demilitarized zone that straddles the Iraq-Kuwait border yesterday.

Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have massed 280,000 troops in the region to kill or capture Saddam, overthrow his government and rid Iraq of chemical and biological weapons the United States accuses it of stockpiling. Iraq denies having such weapons.

The zone, monitored by the United Nations since the 1991 Gulf War, extends three miles into Kuwait and 10 km into Iraq. Soldiers donned chemical suits at desert staging posts that were swept by fierce sandstorms.

U.S. officials had said upward of 3,000 satellite-guided bombs and cruise missiles would be unleashed from sea and air on targets vital to Saddam's government to start the war.

In northern Iraq, where Kurds run their own affairs under the protection of another post-Gulf War no-fly zone, the de facto frontier with Saddam's forces was also quiet.

Reuters correspondent David Hemming, on the Kurdish side of the border near the town of Dohuk, said Kurdish fighters told him 10 Iraqi military trucks had moved up to the Iraqi lines yesterday evening and local residents said Kurdish "peshmerga" guerrillas had reinforced their own lines.

Hemming also said a handful of European-looking men in civilian clothes had been heading for a position nearby with Kurdish guards. Kurdish fighters say they have been cooperating with U.S. special forces in the region, which lies close to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, the main oil center in the north.

The United States had wanted to open a northern front to attack Iraq from NATO ally Turkey.

But, faced with popular opposition to war on fellow Muslims, Ankara balked at letting U.S. troops onto its soil.

Few hours to the attack 17 Iraqi soldiers yesterday surrendered to the American forces in northern Kuwait as allied troops moved into final positions.

Military sources in Kuwait confirmed the surrender but gave no further details. U.S.-led forces in northern Kuwait have made plans for processing large number of Iraqi soldiers they expect to surrender quickly once war breaks out.

The strategy, dubbed "shock and awe" by the U.S. military, is designed to destroy Saddam's air defenses, remove his ability to command and control his forces while delivering such a severe psychological blow to Iraqi troops that many will be too stunned and demoralized to resist.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain offered Saddam a home at an emergency meeting of the cabinet in Bahrain. The Gulf country also hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which has its headquarters there.

"The Bahraini ruler said Bahrain...is ready to host Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if he wants to reside there with all dignity," BNA said.

"The king said this initiative from Bahrain came as part of its national responsibility to preserve regional security and stability and assure that the region lived in peace, in addition to sparing Iraq and its brotherly people war," BNA added.

At the United Nations, Russia, France and Germany voiced final objections to a war they, as well as millions of people around the world, had bitterly opposed and tried to prevent.

Five foreign ministers spoke at a U.N. Security Council session to hear a report by chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, who expressed disappointment that inspections were curtailed only 3 1/2 months after they began.

"We are meeting here today only a few hours before the guns are fired," said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

He said a war against Iraq would exacerbate terrorism in the Middle East, declaring, "To those who think that the scourge of terrorism will be eradicated through what is done in Iraq, we say that they run the risk of failing in their objective."

But he said Paris, which has led the international diplomatic campaign against a U.S.-led war against Iraq, believed it was now time for the international community to pull together and address Iraq's humanitarian needs.

Villepin as well as Foreign Ministers Joschka Fischer of Germany, Igor Ivanov of Russia and Farouq al-Shara of Syria, appealed for inspectors to complete their job in the future and for the 15-member Security Council to endorse Blix's work programme, which the United States and Britain so far have refused to do.

"The fact of the matter is that the situation on the ground will change, and so will the nature of the remaining disarmament tasks," U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte told the council. "Considering a work programme at this time is quite simply out of touch with the reality that we confront."

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was blunt. "We have to state clearly under the current circumstance that the policy of military intervention has not credibility.

"There is no basis in the U.N. Charter for a regime change with military means." he said.

Blix at the meeting, called a day after 134 arms inspectors left Iraq, expressed disappointment that the inspection process was curtailed.

"I naturally feel sadness that three and a half months of work carried out in Iraq have not brought the assurances needed about the absence of weapons of mass destruction or other proscribed items in Iraq, that no more time is available for our inspections and that armed action now seems imminent," he told