The White House said $62.6 billion would pay for the deployment of more than 250,000 US troops to the Gulf, $5 billion will aid key allies and $2.4 billion will go toward humanitarian relief and reconstruction in Iraq.

Fierce sandstorms were holding up US-led forces in their advance to Baghdad as the invaders pummeled the outskirts of the capital with airstrikes in an apparent bid to weaken elite Republican Guard units.

On the sixth day of the US-led war on Iraq, the allies reported gains in the south, saying they finally seized the key deep-water port of Umm Qasr on the Kuwaiti border and had crossed the Euphrates River at the town of Nassiriyah to press northward.

Reports from Iraq’s second largest city of Basra said local people were mounting a “popular uprising” against Saddam’s ruling Baath Party. A correspondent reported on the London-based Sky News television channel that British forces outside the southern city were directing heavy artillery fire on Iraqi troops in a bid to assist the insurgents.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf slammed the reports as propaganda.

“I categorically deny these provocative lies the Americans are trying to spread through CNN,” he said in a live telephone interview with the Doha-based Al-Jazeera network.

In a message here Saddam urged tribal leaders, influential personalities and citizens in the country to fight the enemy by attacking them from all sides. “We have to inflict heavy losses on the invading forces,” the president told the Iraqis.

Two British soldiers were killed by “friendly fire” near Basra, the Ministry of Defense said in London. Two others were seriously injured.

A statement from the ministry said the two were killed in an accidental exchange of fire between two British Challenger tanks.

Large explosions rocked Baghdad late yesterday, briefly halting Iraqi television broadcasts as the first blast struck the capital.

Several large explosions were heard and televisions in one hotel where journalists were staying immediately went black.

Arab News correspondents heard allied warplanes roaring high over the capital, but the aircraft were hidden by dark clouds from fuel trenches lit by the Iraqi authorities, apparently in a bid to foil the air strikes. One cruise missile fell behind this correspondent’s house, but failed to explode.

The battle for Baghdad is nearing a critical phase, with US troops backed by Apache helicopter gun ships primed for an all-out assault on the Republican Guard.

The determined resistance in the southern desert towns which US war planners believed would be a walkover has raised fears of what coalition forces could encounter in Baghdad.

“The toughest fight is ahead of us,” General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told ABC television. “We know it will be a very tough battle,” he added.

US officers said 30 to 40 Apaches, the US military’s most fearsome attack helicopter, had made initial runs against Saddam’s crack troops as the prelude to what could be an epic tank battle.

The US Army’s Third Infantry Division was fewer than 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad, field reports said, with the US 101st Airborne Division crawling up from the southwest and the Marines to the east.

But their advance through the desert was slowed by howling winds and swirling sand, which dramatically reduced visibility.

A US Apache and a Black Hawk helicopter attached to the Third Infantry Division went missing in southern Iraq when visibility was cut to 100 meters, said a senior US officer.

Further south, a sandstorm disrupted critical helicopter operations by the 101st Airborne Division.

Casualty tolls remained unreliable, with Iraq saying 16 civilians had been killed and another 95 wounded in allied bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities since Monday night. British losses mounted to 18 troops — 16 from accidents — but US losses were undetermined.

President Bush insisted that Operation Iraqi Freedom was continuing as planned.

“Our coalition is on a steady advance. We’re making good progress,” he said in a speech at the Pentagon.

As the battle for Baghdad approaches, Iraqi officials have hinted they intend to draw US and British forces into dangerous street battles risking high civilian and military casualties.

The resistance in Umm Qasr surprised coalition commanders as small numbers of Iraqi soldiers embarrassed the might and technology of the world’s superpower and its military ally.