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British newspapers speculated Saturday on the fate of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein following US reports that he may have been killed 
or wounded in the first US air 
strikes of the war against Baghdad.

"If Mr Hussein was indeed killed, the war may nearly have ended 
on the first night it began," the Financial Times said in a front-page article, according to AFP reports. It said if the rumours of his death are true "the US can hope that Iraqi resistance might crumble entirely."

"The Saddam conundrum: Was he killed in first raid on Baghdad?" asked The Independent, which said the answer "may decide the course of the war against Iraq." ABC television in the United States said Saddam may have been injured in Thursday's US 
bombing raid on his compound.

Saddam and his sons were believed to be in a residential compound that was struck by F-117 stealth fighters and sea-
launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to US intelligence.

Witnesses saw Saddam being carried away from the 
wreckage of the compound with an oxygen mask over his face, according to intelligence sources quoted by ABC. But Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf said Saddam, who was seen in a television broadcast just after the raid, 
and his family had survived a strike on one of their homes.

Meanwhile, AFP said: Baghdad woke up Saturday to more air raids after a night that saw hundreds of bombs and missiles rain on the capital in the start of the US-led campaign to "shock and awe" Saddam Hussein's regime into submission. The United States said 
an entire Iraqi regular army division had surrendered, as US and British troops advanced in southern Iraq toward the key 
city of Basra.

A Pentagon official said the 51st Division troops, which would normally total between 8,000 and 10,000, gave up en masse in the biggest surrender since US and British forces crossed into Iraq on Thursday hours after the start of the war to bring down Saddam.

US forces have been showering Iraqi troops with hundreds of thousands of propaganda leaflets urging them to give up and providing instruction on how to surrender.

even as the ordnance fell. Two US marines were the first combat deaths among the invaders. But a US Marine helicopter also crashed in Kuwait early Friday, killing eight British Royal Marines and the American crew of four.

The US campaign received a boost when Turkey opened its airspace to US warplanes bound for Iraq after tense haggling in which 
Ankara sought US approval for its own military intervention in northern Iraq.

"It has been determined that it is in Turkey's interests to open Turkish airspace," Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul said.

A report by CNN's Turkish-language service said Ankara has already sent 1,000 soldiers into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq late Friday, officially to prevent Kurdish rebels from launching attacks against Turkey.

Iraqi Kurds, who have held de facto autonomy since the 1991 Gulf war, have warned that they would resist any incursions by Turkey, which has long fought Kurdish separatists within its own borders.

Washington, trying to drown out world opposition to the war,
 boasted it has 46 countries in a "coalition of the willing" supporting the offensive. The White House dropped Angola from the public list of coalition countries, 
but added Costa Rica, Palau and Panama.

But French President Jacques Chirac, a leading opponent of the 
war, said he would refuse to accept a US-British post-war 
administration of Iraq, saying the United Nations was the 
only body which could be responsible for reconstruction.

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