- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United
States again pounded Baghdad from the air on Saturday and Iraq hit back
with a car bomb attack that killed at least five people at a U.S. military
checkpoint in the south.
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- The car bombing occurred after U.S. troops paused in
their charge on Baghdad to strengthen supply lines against hit-and-run
attacks by Iraqi militiamen loyal to President Saddam Hussein.
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- A U.S. official said the vehicle exploded near the Shi'ite
Muslim shrine city of Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad. American
soldiers were believed among the dead.
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- He said soldiers of the First Brigade of the Third Infantry
Division had been searching the car at the time. It was not immediately
known if the car driver was alone.
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- A U.S. military spokesman said 30 Apache helicopters
had attacked Republican Guards southwest of Baghdad, killing at least 50
elite troops and destroying about 25 vehicles.
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- President Bush, frustrated at criticism that his military
planners had underestimated Iraqi resistance, spoke of sacrifices ahead
but promised Americans complete victory.
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- A bomb crashed into the heart of Baghdad in the afternoon
in the latest of a wave of raids on the city in the past 24 hours. "It
was a huge explosion in the city center, close to the Tigris river,"
Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul said.
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- In an overnight blitz on Baghdad, at least one cruise
missile crashed into the Information Ministry.
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- IRAQI CASUALTIES
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- Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told a news
conference U.S. raids had killed 68 civilians and wounded 107 in the past
24 hours, including the victims of a blast at a market.
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- A hospital doctor said the toll from the market attack
on Friday evening had risen to 62 dead and 49 wounded.
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- The United States has said it is checking to see whether
its forces were responsible for the explosion. Some residents in the Shi'ite
district where it occurred complained on Saturday that Iraqi anti-aircraft
batteries had been located nearby.
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- As dawn broke on the 10th day of the war, distant explosions
reverberated from the southern approaches of the Iraqi capital where crack
Republican Guards are believed to be dug in.
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- After racing to within 50 miles of Baghdad, U.S. units
have been ordered to pause for four to six days because of supply shortages
and stiff Iraqi resistance, U.S. officers said.
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- They said the "operational pause" would allow
time for the military to sort out logistics problems along vulnerable supply
lines stretching up to 300 miles from Kuwait.
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- Many analysts had expected Saddam to defend fiercely
his power bases in Baghdad and Tikrit, but few anticipated that he would
be able to sustain resistance to the U.S.-British onslaught in mainly Shi'ite
southern towns that staged brief but bloody revolts against him after the
1991 Gulf War.
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- Sahaf denied reports from U.S. and British forces that
they had come under fire from Iraqi soldiers disguised as civilians.
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- "There are only Iraqi civilians fighting those mercenaries
and invaders," the minister said. "They are like a snake and
we are going to cut it in pieces."
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- Since the war began, U.S. forces have lost 30 killed,
104 wounded, 15 missing and seven taken prisoner, a U.S. official said
on Saturday. The toll includes accidents as well as combat.
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- IRAQI MISSILE HITS KUWAIT
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- In Kuwait City, an Iraqi missile evaded Patriot anti-missile
defenses and slammed into a breakwater, damaging a seafront shopping mall
and wounding two people, Kuwaiti officials said.
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- They said the missile, probably a Chinese-made anti-ship
Silkworm, had been fired from the vicinity of the Faw peninsula, which
British forces said they had captured early in the war.
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- Iraq has fired a dozen missiles at Kuwait since the war
began, but this was the first to hit the capital.
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- Polls in the United States showed Americans are now braced
for a much longer, bloodier and costlier war in Iraq than first expected,
but Bush brushed off criticism of U.S. strategy.
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- Addressing war veterans in Washington, Bush said: "We're
inflicting severe damage on enemy forces...we will accept no outcome except
complete victory."
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- Achieving that goal seemed some way off, however, with
U.S. columns finding their advance hampered by Iraqi resistance and problems
in keeping up supplies of food, fuel and ammunition.
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- "We have almost out-run our logistics lines,"
one officer said in the northernmost stretch of the U.S. thrust.
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- Air strikes would keep battering Iraqi forces during
the pause, said the officers, who asked not to be named.
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- Describing the massed helicopter attack on Republican
Guards southwest of Baghdad, U.S. Major Hugh Cate of the 101st Airborne
Division said, "We fired 40 missiles and we had 40 hits."
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- One helicopter had been disabled by a "hard landing"
when it returned to its desert airbase. The pilot broke a leg.
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- U.S. planes also bombed a building where some 200 Iraqi
paramilitaries were said to have gathered in the southern city of Basra.
There was no immediate word on casualties.
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- At war headquarters in Qatar, a British spokesman said
the attackers needed to prepare for a next phase. "I would not necessarily
call it a pause," Group Captain Al Lockwood said. The overall war
plan was "on track and on time," he added.
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- INFORMATION MINISTRY DAMAGED
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- In Baghdad, at least one missile struck the Information
Ministry complex, usual venue for government news conferences.
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- Reuters correspondent Khaled Oweis said the missile appeared
to have pierced the roof of the main 11-storey building, breaking aerials
and satellite dishes.
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- In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused
Syria of providing night-vision equipment to Iraq.
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- Damascus dismissed the charge, saying Washington was
merely seeking to divert attention from Iraqi deaths.
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- Britain said on Saturday a British soldier was killed
and five wounded, apparently in "friendly fire" from U.S. aircraft.
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- Before the incident the official British death toll in
the war was 20, only five of whom were killed in combat.
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- At the United Nations in New York, the Security Council
voted unanimously to give control of the Iraq oil-for-food program to Secretary-General
Kofi Annan for the next 45 days.
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- The aim was to use billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenues
to get humanitarian goods to civilians.
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