Robert Fisk: Many civilian casualties resulted from US incursion into Baghdad

The US Marines and special forces who spread out along the west bank of the river broke into Saddam Hussein's largest palace, filmed its lavatories and bathrooms and lay resting on its lawns before moving down towards the Rashid Hotel and sniping at soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of Iraqi men, women and children were brought to Baghdad's hospitals in the hours that followed – victims of bullets, shrapnel and cluster bombs. We could actually see the twin-engined American A-10s firing their depleted uranium rounds into the far shore of the river.

I went off to buy fruit when a low-flying American jet crossed the street and dropped its payload 1,000 metres away in an explosion that changed the air pressure in our ears.

Outside the Rashid Hotel, the marines opened fire on civilians and militiamen, blasting a passing motorcyclist onto the road and shooting at a Reuters photographer who managed to escape with bullet holes in his car.

All across Baghdad, hospitals were inundated with wounded, many of them women and children hit by fragments of cluster bombs.

Was this what they call "rich in history"? General Stanley Maude invaded Iraq in 1917 and occupied Baghdad. We repeated the performance in 1941 when the former prime minister Rashid Ali decided to back Nazi Germany. The British, Australians and Arabs "liberated" Damascus from the Turks in 1918. The Israelis occupied Beirut in 1982 and lived – not all of them – to regret it. Now the armies of America and, far behind them, the British – a pale ghost of Maude's army – are moving steadily into this most north-eastern of Arab capitals to dominate a land that borders Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

As night fell, I came across three Iraqi defenders at the eastern end of the great Rashid Bridge.These three – two Baathist militiamen and a policeman – were ready to defend the eastern shore from the greatest army known to man.

That in itself, I thought, said something about both the courage and the hopelessness of the Arabs.