- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis
said more than 50 people were killed on Friday in an air raid they said
targeted a popular Baghdad market as the United States unleashed on the
capital some of the heaviest air strikes of the war.
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- U.S. ground troops advancing to Baghdad paused to regroup
and strengthen supply lines, while American officials rejected criticism
that the invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein and rid Iraq of illegal
weapons was becoming bogged down.
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- President Bush said the campaign had made great progress
and pledged victory.
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- "The Iraqi regime will be disarmed. The Iraqi regime
will be removed from power. Iraq will be free," Bush declared.
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- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accused Syria of
providing military equipment to Iraq -- a charge dismissed by Iraq's neighbor
as a tactic to divert attention away from Iraqi deaths. Rumsfeld also warned
Iran, against backing military personnel active inside Iraqi territory.
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- Iraq played on U.S. and British fears of being sucked
into bloody street battles, especially in a capital heavily defended by
elite Republican Guards. The Gulf nation swore to fight on and promised
"living hell" for the invaders.
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- In Baghdad, Dr. Osama Sakhari at Al Noor Hospital said
he counted 55 people killed and more than 47 wounded from an air raid at
a busy market that could further undermine American and British efforts
to win Iraqi hearts and minds.
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- Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said,
"My explanation for their increasing crimes against civilians is that
they are feeling the weight of the series of defeats which we inflicted
on them on the outskirts of the cities and in the desert."
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- Distraught Iraqis crowded into the hospital, comforting
or searching for scores of loved ones they say were killed or wounded.
Reuters correspondent Hassan Hafidh said he counted five bodies in one
of the hospital's morgue units.
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- Abu Dhabi television said cruise missiles may have hit
the market in the city's Shula neighborhood and showed a gaping hole on
one street and damaged cars.
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- U.S. officials said they had no knowledge of such reports.
Earlier in the 9-day-old war, the Pentagon blamed an explosion in a city
residential area on an errant Iraqi missile.
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- Images of carnage in Iraq have fueled Arab anger against
a war which Washington says is not aimed at ordinary Iraqis.
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- NEW AIR STRIKES
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- Fresh blasts were heard on the city's outskirts around
midnight (4 p.m. EST), Reuters correspondents said. New explosions also
rocked Mosul late Friday, according to a correspondent for al-Jazeera television
in the northern city. Earlier, U.S. defense officials said a radar-avoiding
B-2 stealth bomber had dropped two earth-shattering 4,600-pound bombs on
a communications center in downtown Baghdad.
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- It was the first use of the devastating "bunker
busters" on Baghdad since the start of the war.
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- Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki saw two damaged communications
centers in the capital. One big building was struck at its base and a tangled
pile of smoldering rubble was all that was left of a smaller facility.
Many telephone lines were knocked out.
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- Iraqis converged on mosques for Friday prayers, enraged
rather than cowed by the U.S. bombardment.
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- "You can see and hear the missiles and bombs raining
down on us and yet Muslims are coming to the house of God to pray,"
said the preacher at the "Mother of All Battles" Mosque.
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- Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said overnight
raids on the capital had killed seven civilians and wounded 92. Witnesses
said eight more people were killed when a Baghdad office of the ruling
Baath Party was demolished in a later raid. Both tolls were given before
the deaths at the market.
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- Sahaf also said U.S. forces had used cluster bombs against
the Shi'ite shrine city of Najaf, killing 26 civilians and wounding 60.
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- In Washington, Rumsfeld said shipments of military supplies,
including night-vision goggles, have been crossing into Iraq from Syria.
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- "These deliveries pose a direct threat to the lives
of coalition forces. We consider such trafficking as hostile acts, and
will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments," Rumsfeld
said. He declined to comment whether the United States would react with
military force against Syria.
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- Rumsfeld also told Iran U.S.-led troops would treat any
Iranian-backed military personnel in Iraq as combatants.
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- "... the entrance into Iraq by military forces,
intelligence personnel or proxies not under the direct operational control
of (U.S. Army) General (Tommy) Franks will be taken as a potential threat
to coalition forces," he said.
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- IRAQI CELLS
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- Against a backdrop of fear Iraq would launch terror attacks
against the United States, the State Department said Iraqi intelligence
officers had planned to attack U.S. targets in two foreign countries but
the local authorities arrested them before they could act.
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- One of the groups of Iraqis was in the Gulf region, a
U.S. official said. The MSNBC news channel said one was in Jordan.
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- In the ground war, an American officer said U.S. forces
had fought around 1,500 Iraqis overnight near Najaf, 100 miles south of
the capital. He had no word on casualties.
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- Reuters reporter Luke Baker, near Najaf, said U.S. forces
used tanks and artillery. "The battle raged for a few hours. It finished
about 3 a.m. (7 p.m. EDT/midnight GMT)," Baker said.
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- Sahaf said Iraqi forces destroyed 33 tanks and armored
vehicles and killed four invaders in the area. U.S. officials reported
four Marines missing near Nassiriya to the south.
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- Reuters correspondents with American units, some of which
have raced as close as 50 miles to Baghdad, said the columns seemed in
no hurry to advance further for now.
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- Officers said they needed to bring fresh stocks of food,
fuel and ammunition down the long supply lines from Kuwait.
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- Britain's Army chief, Mike Jackson, dismissed suggestions
that the campaign was stalled.
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- "Armies cannot keep moving forever without stopping
from time to time to regroup, to ensure their supplies are up," he
said. "It's a pause while people get sorted out for what comes next.
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- "The conventional fight, if you like, with the Republican
Guard is not too far away I suspect," he added.
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- U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a leading
hawk, said the United States had not anticipated some of the tactics used
by Iraqi fighters but asserted that the campaign was ahead of schedule.
"On the whole things are happening faster than expected," he
said.
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- Within the next month the Pentagon plans to double its
forces on the ground in Iraq to about 200,000.
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- Wartime caution prompted by fear of a protracted military
standoff in Iraq lured investors away from stocks and the dollar, and boosted
demand for "safe-haven" assets like gold.
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- In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously
to approve using billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenues to buy food
and medicine in a bid to avert a humanitarian crisis.
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