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— BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq vowed on Tuesday to defeat U.S. forces advancing in the heart of Baghdad with tanks backed by aircraft and artillery.

"We are going to tackle them and going to destroy them," Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told reporters.

"They are going to surrender or be burned in their tanks," he said of the U.S. forces, asked if Iraq itself was considering surrender on the 20th day of the war aimed at toppling President Saddam Hussein.

U.S. tanks advanced in the center of the city from an overnight base in a compound of a presidential palace captured by U.S. forces on Monday. Aircraft and artillery pounded government buildings in the center of the city.

"Baghdad is bracing to pummel the invaders," he said.

Sahaf accused U.S. forces of attacking civilian targets in central Baghdad, including the offices of Al-Jazeera television. Jazeera said a cameraman was killed in a U.S. air raid.

"They are in an hysterical state and think that if they kill civilians they are going to win, they're not going to win," he said.

photo credit and caption:

A member of the Iraqi Republican guard, dressed in civilian clothes, looks from behind barbed wire at an abandoned Iraqi military base under the control of U.S. Marines in the suburbs of the Iraqi capital Baghdad on April 8, 2003. U.S. Marines attacked a military airfield on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad on Tuesday, as U.S. forces tried to tighten their noose around the Iraqi capital, a Reuters correspondent said. Photo by Oleg Popov/Reuters

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