The United States launched a ferocious, around-the-clock aerial assault on military targets in Baghdad and other cities Friday, and invading ground troops penetrated 100 miles into Iraq. The ancient capital’s skyline exploded in balls of flame, leaving Saddam Hussein’s Old Palace compound and other symbols of his government ablaze.

Coalition commanders accepted the surrender of the 8,000-member 51st Iraqi Infantry Division near the southern city of Basra, officials said, and U.S. and British troops encountered little resistance as they seized Iraq’s only port city and moved to secure key oil fields.

After an overnight reprieve, a huge explosion shook the center of Baghdad before dawn today, and aircraft could be heard overhead. A halo of smoke hung in the sky.

Units moved into western airfield complexes where Iraq was believed to have Scud missiles capable of reaching Israel, and possibly weapons of mass destruction as well.

“We’re going at it hammer and tongs,” said Capt. Mark Fox, back aboard the USS Constellation after a bombing run that was part of a widely heralded Pentagon effort to “shock and awe” the Iraqis.

Military commanders reported that two Marines were killed by enemy fire, the first coalition combat deaths in the 3-day-old Operation Iraqi Freedom. One died trying to secure an oil pumping station; the other fell in the battle for Umm Qasr, the port city taken after a fight.

No sign of quitting

Iraqi troops surrendered in large numbers — some so eagerly that they turned themselves in to journalists accompanying American forces. But the regime gave no clear sign of quitting.

Sgt. Jesse Lanter of Ft. Mill, S.C., carries Cpl. Barry Lange of Portland, Ore., off the battlefield after Lange injured his leg while running. Members of 1st Marine Division engaged Iraqi soldiers with gunfire Friday at the headquarters of Iraqi mechanized infantry divisions near Az Bayer, Iraq.

Asked whether Iraqis plan a counterattack, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said, “Our leadership and our armed forces will decide this, in what guarantees the defeat of those mercenaries, God willing.”

“This criminal (Bush) in the White House is a stupid criminal,” he added.

The Iraqi regime released a video of Saddam in his uniform meeting with his son Qusai, the commander of the Republican Guard, and the defense minister, Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, but it was unclear when the video was made.

There was continued debate among U.S. intelligence officials over the fate of Saddam and whether he had been wounded or even killed in a Wednesday night strike on a building in Baghdad.

Whether or not Saddam was alive, U.S. intelligence officials said the Iraqi command and control system was in disarray, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, “The regime is starting to lose control of their country.”

A building explodes during heavy bombardments of Baghdad, Iraq, by U.S..led forces. The blur was caused by the shock of the explosion.

The aerial onslaught was designed to accelerate that.

1,000 cruise missiles

The U.S. Central Command, which is running the war, said the targets included military command and control installations and buildings in and around Baghdad, as well as targets in the northern cities of Mosul, Kirkuk and Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown.

One senior defense official said U.S. and British warplanes flying from more than 30 bases would fly about 1,500 strike missions during the first 24 hours of the accelerated campaign. Plans called for the launch of nearly 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

U.S. Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit help an Iraqi soldier with water from a canteen in southern Iraq. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered to coalition troops on Friday.

After weeks of delay, Turkey relented and agreed to let combat aircraft fly over their territory. At the same time, however, Turkey sent 1,000 troops into northern Iraq, and the government said it would send more to prevent Iraqi Kurds from creating an independent state. The United States strongly opposes any unilateral move by Turkey into northern Iraq.

In a strike at terrorism in northern Iraq, U.S. forces fired five missiles at the base of an Islamic militant group allegedly linked to the al-Qaida network, Kurdish officials said. Washington has claimed that the group, Ansar al-Islam, connects Saddam to al-Qaida.

In Washington, President Bush said, “We’re making progress” toward the goal of liberating Iraq. Before heading to Camp David for the weekend, Bush also sent lawmakers formal notification of his decision to send troops into combat.

Worldwide protest

Antiwar sentiment flared in the United States, major European cities and across the Middle East and Asia.

Police clashed with thousands of antiwar demonstrators trying to storm the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, leaving a policeman and two protesters dead amid a barrage of bullets, rocks, water cannons and tear gas canisters.

A U.S. Marine with India Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, runs with a rocket launcher while Marines engage Iraqi soldiers in gunfire at the headquarters of the Iraqi 51st and 32nd mechanized infantry divisions near Az Bayer, Iraq. The skirmish took place Friday.

Large-scale protests also occurred in San Francisco and Chicago and police took about two dozen protesters into custody near the White House.

In Iraq, the government-run news agency said Saddam had decreed that any Iraqi who kills an enemy soldier would get a reward equivalent to $14,000. The reward for capturing an enemy soldier was put at $28,000.

But that was more bluster than bounty, as most Iraqi units offered no resistance, and those that did were overwhelmed by American and British troops and their high-tech weaponry.

American units advancing west of the southern city of Basra secured the Rumeila field, whose daily output of 1.3 million barrels makes it Iraq’s most productive.

“All the key components of the southern oil fields are now safe,” Adm. Michael Boyce, chief of the British defense staff, told reporters in London. “We have specialist civilian contractors on their way who will be in the area very shortly, in a day or two, to deal with the oil well fires.”

This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite image taken Friday shows an undetermined number of oil well fires in southeastern Iraq, the plumes of which are visible, indicated by the arrow.

One military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. Navy SEAL commandos took control of two terminals in the Persian Gulf where Iraqi oil can be loaded onto huge tanker ships. At least one of the terminals contained explosives that had not yet been wired for detonation, the official said.

Not far away, Australian forces intercepted an Iraqi patrol boat filled with sea mines and other equipment.

Control of Umm Qasr, located along the Kuwait border about 290 miles southeast of Baghdad, gives U.S. and British forces access to a port for military and humanitarian supplies and helps speeds the clearing of Iraqi resistance in the south.

Pentagon officials have long planned for an attack they called “shock and awe.”

They held off for two nights, first because Bush ordered Wednesday night’s opening strike against Saddam and then because officials hoped Iraqi capitulation would make it unnecessary.