WE HAD just arrived at Saddam International Airport yesterday when the battle for Baghdad erupted in its full fury right above our heads. In seconds we were huddled inside a makeshift shelter with six terrified Iraqi soldiers as mortars and artillery shells whistled overhead.

Our government minder had taken my cameraman, Phil Dye, and I the 12 miles out out to the airport on the capital’s southwest fringe to rebut reports that coalition forces were massed to attack.

A much larger group of reporters had visited earlier in the afternoon, courtesy of the Iraqi Government, and did indeed see nothing but a vast expanse of Tarmac and two completely empty runways of what was effectively a ghost airport.

We arrived two hours later, at about 6pm. We were the last people there, and we had just stopped at a makeshift checkpoint 400 yards short of the terminal when the shelling started. The irregular Iraqi soldiers at the checkpoint dived into a dugout ringed by sandbags and we joined them as the barrage erupted.

We heard distant cracks, then the shells whistled and whined overhead. It is a noise I will not forget. Five or six seconds elapsing between firing and impact. No shells landed on the airport itself. They were destined for Iraqi positions around the airport, and for Baghdad itself.

It seemed like an eternity, but it was probably only four or five minutes before there was a lull in the barrage and we decided to make a break for it. The dugout offered us protection against nothing.

Our driver sped us back toward Baghdad down a deserted multi-lane highway when the shelling began again.

We abandoned the car, ran into a field and took shelter in a ditch, hoping to sit it out. But there was no let-up so we returned to the car and carried on driving. It was now dusk. We drove through thick smoke and saw detonations of some sort at a nearby army base. As we entered the city we veered off onto the side streets, and found a city braced to defend itself.

The Fedayin were out in their black uniforms and balaclavas. Men armed with Kalashnikovs were manning sandbag emplacements on the corners. I had never seen so many armed Iraqis on the streets.

The Americans and British may say their motivation is to liberate the Iraqis, but these people gave every impression that they were prepared to die for their country.

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