CAPTAIN JACK KEMP: 'Bloody hell they're all executions... you can see bullet shots to the head'

DEATH LIST: File of a torture victims

HORRIFIC: Victim's ID among bones

CHILLING: Boots and bones in bag

WALL OF DEATH: Bullet holes in plinth

US TANKS SWEEP INTO BAGHDAD

IT started as a reconnaissance mission, but why did it end up as a cakewalk? American tanks and armoured vehicles swept deep into Baghdad yesterday after encountering minimal resistance. The answer is that Special Forces had spent days searching the area for military targets, and used lasers to guide in smart bombs. Even tanks squeezed into narrow alleys were hit. Iraq's Republican Guard had simply melted away after being left without orders and being decimated by 18 days of bombing. But there may still be a tough fight ahead. The Special Republican Guard, Saddam's own bodyguards, are believed to still be hidden in a deep underground labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city—and in homes disguised as civilians. For weeks the Iraqis had been boasting the Americans would face Armageddon inside Iraq. But instead just four Americans were injured in yesterday's astounding patrol. Now special forces will expand their role—identifying senior targets from Saddam's regime. Helicopter-troops will swoop into the city from their base at newly-renamed Baghdad International Airport. And some experts now think the war could be almost over. Andrew Brookes, from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "It looks like the US forces are going hell for leather to get it over with. They obviously have intelligence showing there will be minimal resistance."

GULF WAR II: Hundreds of skeletons found inside Saddam's horror chamber

Iraq's death camp

FROM Chris Bucktin in Basra and Keith Gladdis in Qatar

THIS is the chilling death chamber Saddam Hussein has kept hidden from the world—the gruesome evidence that proves we are right to be fighting this war.

Row after row of plywood coffins containing the skeletons of hundreds of torture victims were found by British troops yesterday in a hangar on an abandoned airfield in southern Iraq.

And among the remains was a terrifying death list of names and graphic photographs of the victims before their ordeal—and after they were finished off with a bullet in the head.

Amid fears that the dead could be victims of Saddam's chemical warfare experiments, a senior British military source told the News of the World: "This appears to be his Auschwitz.

We think this is the first find of many—there are dozens more out there." The horrific discovery was made as:

CHILDREN were hanged from lamposts in front of their parents by Saddam's political henchmen.

Skulls

AMERICAN troops south of Baghdad were digging up a concrete bunker believed to contain chemical weapons, and

SADDAM'S right hand man Chemical Ali was reported killed in a Cruise missile attack on Basra—as well as the al-Qaeda terrorist who planned to unleash a chemical attack on Britain.

The death chamber on the outskirts of Al Zubayr was uncovered by British Captain Jack Kemp during a clearing-up inspection of the building. The full horror unfolded when a soldier of the 3rd Regiment of the Royal Horse Artillery found the death list in a nearby cargo container.

A stunned Capt Kemp said as he flicked through the catalogue of death: "Bloody hell. These are all executions. You can see the bullets, shots to the head."

The stomach-churning pictures of their bloated, twisted faces following torture and possible chemical experiments are too grisly to be shown here. Their wounds are gaping.

Shattered skulls with smashed teeth and bones poke out from more than 200 unsealed coffins, some piled five high, as well as from labelled plastic bags dumped in the hangar near Al Zubayr.

Tufts of thick black hair ripped from scalps are scattered on the floor. In one bag lies an ID card of a man, covered by his own dusty bones.

"Whoever they are, they have been desecrated in their death. No one should ever treat the dead like this,' said Sgt Simon Brain.

In another hangar a dozen tiny concrete cells have been built of breeze blocks. Portraits of Saddam stare from their walls. Rusty hooks dangle from the roofs. Ideal torture chambers.

Outside stood the remnants of what one soldier describes as "a purpose-built shooting gallery"—a plinth in front of a wall riddled with bullets.

As forensic specialists move in to inspect the remains for evidence of war crimes, more definite proof of why Saddam's regime must be toppled was unfolding elsewhere in Iraq.

Members of his barbaric Ba'ath Party tortured and killed dozens of youngsters in Basra leaving their bodies hanging from lamp posts.

Children as young as four were taken from their parents and murdered after extremists targeted families thought to have helped coalition forces. Some parents were forced to watch as their tots were hanged.

Aid worker Vanessa Lough said: "In one street alone the bodies of three children could be seen swinging from lamp posts. And round the corner another child lay burned on the road."

Callous

Proof of Saddam's deliberate starvation of his people was uncovered on the southern side of the city. British troops have found thousands of tonnes of UN food aid supplies stashed inside secret warehouses. It included mountains of baby food.

And it emerged that the callous Iraqi leader even ordered his army to hide tanks in Baghdad streets next to homes and schools. Many were taken out by smart bombs with little damage to buildings.

As the battle for Baghdad intensified, the search for chemical weapons was stepped up. Marines in Aziziyah began digging up a school playground where Iraqi soldiers spent three days burying something. "Local people grabbed a Marine's gas mask and pointed to this site," said a US spokesman.

Meanwhile British commanders claimed the chemical weapons fiend leading Saddam's forces in southern Iraq may have been killed by an air strike. Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan Al-Majid—dubbed Chemical Ali—was identified entering a building in Basra. It was blitzed by laser-guided air strikes with him inside.

And the mastermind behind planned ricin attacks on Britain has been killed in a Special Forces raid in northern Iraq. Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi—Osama bin Laden's main chemical weapons expert—died after 16 cruise missiles hit his camp in Tawela. CIA paramilitaries have found his papers listing names and addresses in Britain.

Last night an intelligence source said: "They confirm a major plot to launch an attack using ricin on the transport network was well advanced."