US President George Bush's 48-hour deadline to his Iraqi counterpart Saddam Hussein to flee or face the consequences passed at 2000 EST [0630 IST, 0100 GMT] with American and allied forces massing at the Iraqi border with Kuwait to launch a ground assault.

The soldiers, in armoured personnel carriers and other military vehicles, were waiting for a nod to move into Iraqi territory from Bush, their commander-in-chief.

CNN quoted an official as saying that Bush could wait to give "go" order and let Iraqi military "stare up at the sky for a little bit".

A few hours before the expiry of the deadline, about a dozen American and allied warplanes, armed with precision-guided bombs, struck 10 Iraqi artillery pieces from the Kuwaiti side, Pentagon officials said.

Jets from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln also struck Iraqi positions in the southern no-fly zone. This was apparently in response to Iraqi firing on allied warplanes.

Even before the start of the assault, 17 Iraqi soldiers had surrendered. The US Air Force encouraged Iraqis to surrender by showering Iraq with more than 2 million leaflets.

During a visit to the USS Kitty Hawk in the north Persian Gulf, the commander of the armada massed against Iraq promised that a US-led air campaign would be the fastest and most powerful ever unleashed.

“The campaign will be unlike any we have seen in the history of warfare, with breathtaking precision, almost eyewatering speed, persistence, agility and lethality," Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of the 5^th Fleet, said.

Keating visited all three US carriers in the Gulf to boost of the morale of the sailors, pilots and aircrews.

At a Pentagon news conference in Washington, a senior US Air Force planner echoed the thoughts.

"I do not think our potential adversary has any idea what's coming," Colonel Gary Crowder, chief of strategy for the Air Combat Command, said.

The US and its allies will unleash thousands of precision weapons on the first day of the campaign to shock the Iraqi regime into surrender, he said.

"The effect that we are trying to create is to make it so apparent and so overwhelming at the very outset of potential military operations that the adversary quickly realises that there is no real alternative here than to fight and die or to give up," he said.

At the state department, spokesman Richard Boucher said the US had brought together its largest-ever emergency humanitarian response team to assist Iraqi civilians.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

• In a veiled attack on the US, India on Wednesday said that unilateralism would not only harm the Security Council, but the entire world. Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani said, "Iraq should implement the UN resolutions, but if there are any problems, the UN Security Council should deal with it."
• Eleven Indians are going to Iraq to act as human shields. They plan to reach Iraq via Jordan and link up with 135 other peace activists. "George Bush is against Islam and Muslims in general and he is misguiding the American people who are not against Muslims," one of them told rediff.com
• Air India and Indian Airlines are operating additional flights from Kuwait to carry Indian expatriates back home on an emergency basis.
• At a press conference in Baghdad on Wednesday, Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz denied that he had defected. "The rumours [of my defection] are part of the psychological war being waged by the United States. The rumours speak for themselves. As you see, I am with you in the great city of Baghdad."
• UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix expressed regret that his teams in Iraq had no more time to complete their work. "I naturally feel sadness that three-and-a-half months of work carried out in Iraq have not brought the assurances needed about the absence of weapons of mass destruction... and that armed action now seems imminent," he said at a Security Council meeting.
• Russia is planning to set up refugee camps in Iran for Iraqi citizens. "A deployment plan has already been drawn up. If necessary, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry would set up camps for Iraqi refugees in Iran," Interfax quoted a government source as saying.
• Sandstorms could be a problem for US helicopters, which are expected to be a key element of an invasion, according to Pentagon officials. The administration wants to launch the air campaign and ground assault almost simultaneously, they added.
• Bush notified Congress he had made a determination that diplomacy would not work to disarm Saddam.
• The Iraqi National Assembly met in "extraordinary session" and backed Saddam. A minister was quoted as saying that US troops face "definite death".
• Iraq is responsible for the current crisis in West Asia, Kuwait News Agency quoted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as saying.
• The king of Bahrain has offered "safe exile" to Saddam, the government-run Bahrain News Agency.
• Kurds in the north of Iraq were fleeing towns and retreating to mountain areas. In the southern region dozens of Iraqi dhows were moving through the Straits of Hormuz and out of the Persian Gulf.
• Italy's parliament authorised the government to offer the US-led coalition use of Italian air space and military bases.
• Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told cabinet ministers that the chance that Iraq will launch strikes on Israel "is very small, but we have taken all necessary precautions...