US and British bombings were aimed at disabling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's "levers of oppression and power" and not the Iraqi people, Blair said in an article for Sunday's The People newspaper.

"While the dramatic TV pictures have shown the force of the attacks on Baghdad, they have also highlighted just how much effort has gone into safeguarding civilians and ensuring the targets are Saddam's regime and machinery of control and terror," Blair said.

However, he said: "We must realize that no matter how hard we try to avoid them, there will be civilian casualties."

Blair, who has sent about 45,000 troops to the Gulf for this ongoing US-led war on disarming Iraq, reiterated it would have made the threat from Saddam even more dangerous if the US and Britain had decided against confronting Iraq.

He would have increased his chemical and biological arsenal and restarted his nuclear program, Blair said.

"So whatever the short-term outcome, the real result would not be peace as all of us want but more bloodshed and conflict," he added.

Since the start of US-led war at dawn on Thursday Baghdad time, Baghdad is now bracing itself for the third consecutive day of US bombing.

Reports quoted US officials as saying that the United States fired more than 1,000 cruise missiles at Baghdad in the last 24 hours.

(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2003)