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Army forces battled Republican Guard units at Hindiyah on Monday in street fighting scarcely 50 miles from Baghdad, seizing stockpiled machine guns and mortars as well as military maps. Relentless bombing in the north forced Iraqi defenders to flee long-held positions.

The dawn raid on Hindiyah along the Euphrates River was one of a series of probes carried out by U.S.-led forces against units guarding the southern approaches to Baghdad, Saddam Hussein's seat of power. One U.S. soldier was reported killed in another battle, this one further to the south in Najaf.

British officials claimed that 8,000 Iraqis have been taken prisoner so far, but Saddam's foreign minister said it was the invading forces who face the choice between death or surrender. "Every day that passes the United States and Britain are sinking deeper in the mud of defeat," said Naji Sabri.

Sabri struck his defiant pose at a news conference at the Iraqi Ministry building bombed for the second time in two days.

Some defecting Iraqis described harrowing conditions, and not only from American air bombardments.

One, who agreed to talk on condition his name not be used, said agents of the ruling Baath party attempted to shoot deserters. "But we decided it was either die from an American bomb or be killed by our own people," he said in the Kurdish town of Kalak in northern Iraq.

The official casualty count for Americans stood at 41 dead, seven captured and eighteen missing. Another 25 British troops have been reported killed in action.

There are no official estimates for Iraqi casualties, although officials have said upwards of 4,000 civilians have been killed and wounded.

There was a casualty of another sort during the day when Peter Arnett was fired by NBC in the fallout from an interview the journalist gave to state-run Iraqi TV. Arnett had said in the interview that the initial plan for the war failed because of Iraq's resistance.

Interviewed on NBC's "Today" show, Arnett said he was sorry. "I want to apologize to the American people for clearly making a misjudgment over the weekend by giving an interview to Iraqi television." He added, "Now, I said in that interview essentially what we all know about the war."

American and British warplanes continued to bomb at will. Communication and command centers in Baghdad were hit during the day, and the U.S. Central Command, which is overseeing the war, said the attack marked the first time that long-range B-1s, B-2s and B-52s had carried out simultaneous raids on the same location.

Much of the day's fighting occurred south of Baghdad, where American forces are gathering strength for the push toward the capital.

U.S. troops staged a raid as the sun rose on Hindiyah, a city of 80,000. Iraqis used small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades to try to prevent a column of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles from taking control of a bridge over the Euphrates.

"This must have been important to him to send down a Republican Guard brigade," said Col. David Perkins, whose troops were facing Iraqis wearing the distinctive patches of Saddam's elite units.

Inside the city, U.S. soldiers found a small cache of weapons. But the haul was bigger at the local Baath Party headquarters.

There, the Americans found tons of ammunition and hundreds of weapons, including several boxes of American grenades marked "Property of the Ministry of Defence of Jordan."

Maps inside the building showed Iraqi military positions and the expected route of the U.S. attack.

The 1st and 2nd brigades of the 101st Airborne Division battled to isolate Najaf, a Shiite holy city. Iraqi forces attacked with mortar and small arms fire, and Maj. Carl Purvis, an Army spokesman, said the Army forces were prepared for house-to-house combat.

"They are trained and poised to do that if necessary," he said.

In the northern part of the country, aircraft hit Iraqi positions near the town of Kalak, aiding Kurdish fighters in their effort to force Iraqis from their positions. Hoishiar Zebari of the Kurdistan Democratic Party said several thousand more U.S. soldiers were expected in the area soon, to help create a new, northern front in the battle against Saddam.

About 1,000 airborne troops parachuted in last week, and Zebari said limited ground operations were underway. "These are behind enemy lines and many, many operations are very sensitive," he told reporters.

There was fresh diplomatic fallout from a war not yet two weeks old.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that a drawn-out conflict would only spark stronger resistance from terror networks that have targeted the United States. "If there is one (Osama) bin Laden now, there will be 100 bin Ladens afterward," he said. At the same time, Mubarak said he would keep the Suez Canal open to American and British warships.

In Washington, a senior official said Secretary of State Colin Powell would travel to Turkey and Belgium on Tuesday for talks on the war as well as postwar reconstruction of Iraq.

Turkey is permitting use of its air space for combat aircraft, but rejected a U.S. request to allow ground troops to invade northern Iraq from Turkish territory.

In Brussels, Powell is expected to meet with both NATO and European Union officials, organizations that are split over the war.

The international Red Cross visited a camp in southern Iraq where 3,000 Iraqis are being held prisoner. But Balthasar Staehelin, the organization's Mideast head, said it had not yet received permission to visit any American POWs.

photo credit and caption:

Seen through a tapestry with Arabic script, U.S. Army soldiers aim towards a bridge over the Euphrates River which the U.S. Army seized in Al Hindiyah, Iraq Monday, March 31, 2003. The Army's Task Force 4-64, part of the 3rd Infantry Division, took the bridge as part of its campaign to move north towards Baghdad.(AP Photo/John Moore)

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