Baghdad Bombarded for 5 Hours by Allies : Air campaign: The raids rattle the hopes of many Iraqis that war is nearing its end, witnesses say.

It was a day of explosions, sirens, fires and seemingly endless billows of black smoke in the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, when an intense allied bombing filled Baghdad with symbols of despair and rattled the hopes of many Iraqis that the war had been nearing its end.

According to eyewitness reports reaching Jordan, bombs and missiles slammed into targets throughout Baghdad and its suburbs for more than five hours in a sustained aerial assault that most Iraqis viewed as a clear signal from allied commanders that the worst may be yet to come.

“There’s no doubt that the Iraqis of Baghdad read this as a message that peace still is not imminent,” reported Tim Llewelyn, the British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent in the Iraqi capital. “The bombing has reduced those hopes considerably.”

The bombing--combined with reports from Washington that President Bush has all but rejected an 11th-hour Soviet peace initiative without awaiting an answer from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--seemed to persuade the Iraqis that the allied force, America, in particular, is, as one Iraqi told Llewelyn, “out to wreck as much of Iraq as they can.”

“Why does this bombing go on?” Llewelyn quoted one dazed Iraqi official as saying amid Tuesday’s aerial onslaught. “They have already set us back 50 years.”

The aerial bombardment was not confined to Baghdad alone, according to radio reports from neighboring Iran in the Islamic Republic News Agency, Tehran’s state-run news agency. IRNA said that Basra, Iraq’s strategic, southernmost city, was equally hard hit. The explosions there were so intense that they rattled windows in the Iranian towns of Khorramshar, Abadan and Dashte Azadegan, as far as 30 miles east of the Iraqi border.

In their official pronouncements Tuesday, Iraqi leaders continued to walk a narrow course between war and peace, with the state-run Baghdad daily, Al Jumhuriya, observing: “Iraq will continue holding the olive peace branch in one hand and the rifle in the other.”

Another government newspaper, Al Iraq, echoed the sentiments of many Iraqis in analyzing the allies’ reluctance to accept any peace plans: “The real purpose of the colonialist campaign led by the United States is not the so-called liberation of Kuwait. The hostile objective aims at two things--the destruction of Iraq and the elimination of its leader, Saddam Hussein.”

Iraq’s most hard-line daily, Al Qadisiya, the organ of the Iraqi armed forces, issued a clear reminder to the allies of what is likely to ensue if the current peace initiative collapses into an all-out land war, in which Iraq is expected to use its chemical and biological weapons. Warning again of “horrible surprises,” it said “the surprises will be unleashed, and then it will be impossible to stop a series of horrible surprises.”

For many residents of the Iraqi capital, Tuesday’s continual bombardment came as a surprise. Many said they had hoped Moscow’s initiative would be accompanied by a lull in the bombing, which has rocked Baghdad for the last five weeks. Several said they were equally shocked by the intensity of Tuesday’s attacks, Jordanians returning from Baghdad reported.

In Baghdad, the bombing was so heavy that it also startled journalists covering the war. They had grown blase about the daily air raids.

But Maamoun Youssef, a Reuters news agency correspondent who is one of three dozen journalists working for Western media in Baghdad, reported that more than 30 explosions rocked the Rashid Hotel, where reporters are quartered. They retreated to the hotel’s basement bomb shelter.

Christoph Maria Froehder, a German television correspondent, said he saw cruise missiles speed past the hotel and strike nearby.