ABCNEWS has learned that the U.S. military is ready to launch the next wave of major air and land attacks, with Baghdad as the primary target later today. U.S. intelligence sources told ABCNEWS that the operational name given to the second wave of airstrikes will be "Exemplary Destruction."

The new wave comes more than 24 hours after the "regime decapitation" first wave of airstrikes, which began after President Bush announced the start of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" on Wednesday night (ET).

U.S. intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS that "exemplary destruction" follows the failure of the first airstrikes to decapitate Saddam's regime, although there are doubts within U.S. intelligence circles about whether the Iraqi leader was hit in Wednesday night's airstrikes on Baghdad.

Eight B-52 aircraft based in Britain are known to have left their base at Fairford in recent hours.

Earlier today, U.S. intelligence sources told ABCNEWS that witnesses at the site of a Baghdad suburban residential complex have told U.S. intelligence officials that Saddam was observed being taken from the bombed complex on a stretcher, with an oxygen mask over his face on Thursday before dawn local time.

U.S. intelligence sources also said there had been a significant lack of communication from the Iraqi leader to his government and military structure since the bombing.

The report came amid doubts about whether a speech broadcast on Iraqi television shortly after the war began on Wednesday (ET), was made by a double. Saddam is known to have several doubles as a security measure.

At news briefing in Baghdad today, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said the first U.S. airstrikes had hit one of Saddam's homes, but he said the Iraqi leader had survived and was safe.

Reports of Saddam's injury came amid major gains by U.S. and British troops rolling toward the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and the strategic southern city of Basra. U.S.-led coalition forces in southern Iraq today encountered hundreds of surrendering Iraqis and some resistance from the Iraqi military before seizing control of the southern Iraqi oil fields.

U.S. Marines encountered armed resistance as they seized the strategic southern Iraqi port town of Umm Qasr. The American flag and the flag of the U.S. Marines was briefly raised over the strategic southern port, according to the BBC's Adam Mynott, who is embedded with a Marine unit.

But a Reuters correspondent traveling with the U.S. Marines said a brief while later that Marines returned and removed the Stars and Stripes. Although there was no reason supplied for taking down the flag, the Bush administration has maintained that U.S. forces were in Iraq to "liberate," not occupy Iraq.

The dramatic gains, however, came with the first reported U.S. combat death, when a soldier in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed by hostile fire in southern Iraq.

President Bush was informed of the U.S. death today and expressed his regrets.

It was reported just hours after four U.S. and eight British soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in the Kuwaiti desert. The British military said it was not taking fire when it went down.

The casualties came as the official Iraqi news agency, the INA, quoted a military spokesman as saying a U.S. or British fighter jet had been downed by anti-aircraft fire and crashed in Kuwait today.

The Pentagon has denied the report.

Dramatic Gains

In a ground offensive that began Thursday from Kuwait, U.S. and British forces moving toward Baghdad seized the strategic al-Faw peninsula in southern Iraq. It is Iraq's only access to the sea and it was the first significant seizure of Iraqi territory in the war.