By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 19, 1998; Page A1

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 18 – Muslim clerics gave fiery speeches and a newspaper illustration showed President Saddam Hussein astride a white charger, slaying a serpent with a lance, as Iraqi officialdom remained defiant today in the face of continued U.S. and British air attacks.

But two nights of cruise missile strikes on the Iraqi capital appear to have taken a considerable toll. Government officials escorted foreign journalists to several damaged buildings, including the Baghdad Museum of Natural History, and to hospital wards filling up with burned and bloodied civilians.

Notwithstanding such "collateral damage," the strikes on military and weapons-related targets appear to have been fairly accurate, inflicting relatively little harm to adjacent civilian structures, including those featured on government tours. Iraqi officials refused to allow visits to targeted sites, including the headquarters of the Iraqi Military Industrial Corp., where damage was clearly visible from the street.

At a news conference tonight, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz confirmed that several of the country's presidential palaces were hit, as well as industrial sites and other facilities that had been subject to monitoring by U.N. inspectors charged with destroying Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Aziz attacked President Clinton as a proven liar, claimed that the air raids were orchestrated by a "Zionist clique" within the U.S. administration and said the bombs being dropped on Iraq spelled a possible end to the U.N. inspection regime. He said Iraq would not permit the resumption of inspections until the U.N. Security Council lifts the international trade sanctions it imposed on the country following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"Iraq cannot tolerate both sanctions and UNSCOM," he said, referring to the U.N. Special Commission charged with overseeing the inspection regime.

In a taped statement aired on Qatar's al-Gezira television, Saddam Hussein said he had no plans to offer a compromise.

"We are not frightened by anyone other than God, and we are not going to bow – only to His sacred face," said Saddam Hussein, speaking calmly and dressed in a khaki uniform.

Iraq has been generous with visas for foreign journalists, who are headquartered at the government press center on the ground floor of a downtown high-rise that houses the Information Ministry. Government officials have taken them on tours to view the evidence of what they call American perfidy. Stops included the Saddam Teaching Hospital, where glass was shattered by an explosion; a maternity hospital, where ceiling tiles were dislodged by the same blast; and a damaged road and private home.

One of today's highlights was the Baghdad Museum of Natural History, where a piece of a missile crashed through the ceiling, shattering windows and a display case housing two stuffed tigers. A stuffed giant pangolin, a sort of anteater with scales, was covered with debris. The museum is near the Oil Ministry.

As night fell, the city braced for another round of attacks, but there was little noticeable tension. When foreign reporters were startled by three loud bangs around 9 p.m., press center employees explained that they came from cannons fired to signal the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of prayer and fasting.

At the same time, Iraqis increasingly were taking stock of the damage done and the lives lost, including an estimated 25 civilians in Baghdad alone. The dead and injured were struck by shrapnel and debris and burned by the explosions.

Abbas Kamel Abdullah, 39, a typist with the Ministry of Education, said three acquaintances, all civilians, were killed while walking near a downtown building occupied by Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard.

On the outskirts of town, U.N. officials decided to evacuate 100 humanitarian workers after a series of strikes at a nearby government building shook their headquarters.

At Yarmouk Hospital, Khidaf Muhammad Khalaf watched over his brother, Faras, 27, who was badly burned by a missile explosion while walking to work near the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad.

"America has now shown its arrogance," he said.

Nearby, a man who was struck by falling debris was being watched by his family.

The hospital's deputy director, Tariq Alsafi, said casualties have arrived at his hospital after each wave of missiles. "Most of them were near the areas of buildings, probably institutions" that were targeted, he said.

At al-Kindy Hospital, which has admitted more than 50 people with injuries from the air raids, director Salmad Kassan accused the Clinton administration of launching the attack to further U.S. economic interests.

"This is economics – oil," he said. "That is their priority. Their second priority is Israel."

That defiant tone was reflected in the daily newspapers.

The newspaper Babel, owned by Saddam Hussein's son Uday, today reflected the official spirit by portraying the president as as a knight bedecked in Bedouin garb astride a white charger and slaying a giant snake with a lance.

Al-Thawra, the official paper of the governing Baath Party, reported that Saddam Hussein has dubbed this era of Iraq's history "Al Fatah," or "The Opening," a reference to the series of battles led by the Prophet Muhammad in his quest to spread Islam throughout the Arabian peninsula.

During a crowded Friday prayer service at the 14th of Ramadan Mosque, Abdul Ghafour Qaysi, a prominent religious leader, called for vengeance.

"Where are the human rights, because America always claims she is the defender of human rights," Qaysi asked. "America has no authorization from the [U.N.] Security Council to attack Iraq, so where is the Security Council action against that? This attack is against humanity."

"We in Baghdad say this attack will increase our steadfastness with our President Saddam Hussein. Iraq is Saddam, and Saddam is Iraq. ... On behalf of clergymen I say to the United States, your endeavors will fail and you will feel sorry for what you are doing now."

At the end, he called on God to "destroy their fleets, and inflict your wrath on the conspirators and wicked people. ... Make Iraq victorious and support our President Saddam Hussein."

Outside, Iraqis said they would not let U.S. bombs spoil what for Muslims is a month in which the daylight hours should be devoted to abstinence from food and drink and the night is set aside for festive meals with friends and family.

Some said they believed Clinton had launched the attack to divert attention from his impeachment woes, questioning why the United States was intent on bombing Iraq when Israel is still holding onto land taken from Jordan and Syria more than 30 years ago.