Iraqi officials said at least one person was killed after U.S. forces pounded Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs Thursday morning at the start of the fight to depose Saddam Hussein. 

A subdued Saddam appeared on state-run television after the air strike on Baghdad, accusing the United States of a "shameful crime" and urging his people to "draw your sword" against the invaders. It could not be immediately determined whether the message had been recorded before the attacks, although U.S. officials said the broadcast appeared to be a fairly impromptu production. 

"We will resist the invaders, and God willing, we will force them to reach the limits where they will lose their patience and thus lose the illusions they have entertained," the Iraqi president, in full military uniform, said in an address peppered with citations from the Quran. 

As a cool and breezy nightfall approached, fewer and fewer people could be seen on Baghdad's normally bustling streets. Residents said many people were rushing to homes, shelters or the countryside, anticipating night attacks. 

Nine people were in serious but stable condition with shrapnel injuries at Baghdad's Al-Yarmouk Hospital, Dr. Jamal Abed Hassan said. They included six members of one family that was having breakfast when their town 20 miles west of Baghdad was attacked, the doctor said. 

"Bush, Bush, listen carefully. We all love Saddam Hussein," one family member, Hamad Abdullah, said as she recovered from injuries in both legs and recited a chant from recent government-organized demonstrations. 

Al-Kindi Hospital in the working class Al-Nahda district treated five people for wounds, including Iraqi TV journalist Anmar Waheed and his 36-year-old sister, who were hurt as they tried to reach a shelter, according to Dr. Osama Saleh al-Dilimi. 

Air sirens first blared about 5:30 a.m. in the Iraqi capital, and yellow and white anti-aircraft tracers streaked through the sky. Strong explosions could be heard. Most seemed to be outside the city, but one was followed by a ball of fire toward the southern part of Baghdad. 

Allied warplanes also hit targets in western Iraq, bombing at least one mobile Scud missile site. Frequent sonic booms and the aircraft sounds also could be heard in northern Iraq, above the city of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish autonomous enclave. 

Some U.S. strikes were aimed directly at Saddam himself. CIA Director George J. Tenet had told President Bush that U.S. intelligence believed it had a probable fix on the residence where Saddam and other Iraqi leaders would be sleeping in the early morning in Baghdad, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

Those other Iraqi leaders were believed to include Saddam's two sons, Qusai and Odai, but officials said it was unclear Thursday whether any of them were actually near the target, or had been killed. Both sons hold high-level security positions in Saddam's regime. 

The initial firing in Baghdad stopped after about 30 minutes and the capital fell still. A mosque's muezzin issued the call for dawn Islamic prayers. Soon after, anti-aircraft fire and distant explosions broke the silence, setting off car alarms. 

Information Ministry spokesman Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said coalition forces hit a customs compound and an Iraqi TV facility in western Iraq and had jammed an Iraqi satellite TV station. He said two civilian locations were hit south of Baghdad. 

Hundreds of armed members of Saddam's Baath party and security forces took up positions in Baghdad after the sirens went off. The streets were mostly empty of civilians - and of regular army troops or armor. 

Many people had streamed out of the capital on Wednesday for the relative safety of the countryside. Nearly every store was shut, and many people taped their windows. 

Some coffee shops and cheap restaurants were open, and even some of the city's double-decker public buses were moving in very light traffic. Some children were out on the streets riding bicycles or playing soccer. 

A Baath Party member, Hussein Ilwan, 47, spent the night the war began on his guard post, behind sandbags in the upscale al Mansour area of the capital. Ilwan said he wants "one of two things: Either a dignified life, or an honorable death."