Baghdad - Washington may fear Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will use biological or chemical arms, but so far his lethal weapons of choice have been tribal chiefs, suicide bombers, militias, women and sandstorms.
...
On Tuesday, Saddam called on strategically important tribal chiefs, who potentially have hundreds of thousands of armed men under their command, to fight invading troops without waiting for further orders.
...
"Track down the enemy and hit them everywhere you find them," he said in a statement read on his behalf on state television by Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf on Tuesday evening.

"These are the days of the great victory awaiting all the honest people of the world," the message said.

Meanwhile a military spokesperson proudly announced on Tuesday that an Iraqi civilian has committed a suicide attack in the southern region of Fao.

"The first suicide attack was carried out this night," Hazem al-Rawi told a press conference in Baghdad.

An Iraqi civilian "penetrated behind enemy lines and destroyed a tank," the spokesperson said, without giving details.

Sahhaf has also praised a "heroic" woman who fired a rocket-propelled grenade that he said had destroyed a coalition armoured personnel carrier in the Souq al-Shuyukh area in central Iraq.

Sahhaf promised to allow the press to meet with Maysoun Hamid Abdallah. "She is a hero," he said.

After infuriating Washington by broadcasting footage of US prisoners of war, including two pilots said to have been shot down over the holy city of Karbala, state media presented the elderly rifle-toting farmer who supposedly did it.

The picture of Ali Obeid Mankash, "the brave," was splashed on the front-page of newspapers.

"He did not hesitate to point his 50-year-old rifle toward the pretentious target in a moment of faith, to shoot down their legend in a single moment," boasted Babel, the ruling Baath party newspaper run by Uday.

» Tribes, women, sand aid Saddam