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• EXCLUSIVE: Blair Says No Surprises in Iraq • U.S. Losing Battle for Arab Public Opinion • Military Spouses Finds Ways to Stay in Touch

Some U.S. forces have paused on their push toward Baghdad, while coalition airstrikes pounded Iraq's information ministry and a meeting of paramilitary forces whom U.S. officials blame for atrocities.

The U.S.-led coalition controls 35 percent to 40 percent of Iraq's territory and 95 percent of its airspace, the Pentagon's top general said.

But near the central Iraqi city of Najaf a suicide bomber killed several Americans on Saturday at a highway checkpoint. An Army officer said the driver of the car signaled for help and then detonated explosives as the soldiers approached.

U.S. forces continued preparations for an expected ferocious battle against Iraq's best-trained and best-equipped troops: The Republican Guard forces arrayed outside Baghdad. Airstrikes, including the first heavy combat from a helicopter unit of the 101st Airborne, continued hammering at the elite Iraqi forces to soften them up for the eventual ground campaign.

The Pentagon said Saturday the number of American deaths in the war stood at 36, of which 29 are classified as killed in action. The others were nonhostile deaths.

Some Marine units took a break on their push toward the Iraqi capital Saturday in what commanders called an "operational pause." The troops worked to secure their lines of communications and wait for more of their comrades to catch up after heavier than expected attacks along the way.

Fierce combat continued in the Euphrates River crossing city of Nasiriyah, where Marines reported four troops missing Friday. U.S. military convoys and aircraft faced frequent attacks by both Iraqi troops and fighters in civilian clothes using rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

Eight Marines remained missing from a Sunday battle near Nasiriyah in which Iraqi forces pretended to surrender but then opened fire on approaching troops, the military said. At least nine Marines were killed, officials said.

The Pentagon blames such attacks on Iraqi paramilitary forces like the Fedayeen Saddam, which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calls "death squads." The military claimed a strike Friday on a building in the southern city of Basra where about 200 such paramilitaries had gathered.

The strike from two U.S. F-15s used bombs with a delayed fuse, which explodes after it penetrates the building, to hit the target without damaging a Christian church 300 yards away, a statement from U.S. Central Command said.

The Army's 101st Airborne Division sent out AH-64 Apache helicopters to attack Republican Guard positions south of Baghdad. Officers at the scene said the helicopters destroyed tanks, armored personnel carriers, other vehicles, a fuel depot and a communications tower.

Two of the attack helicopters were damaged when they made hard landings at their temporary base in the Iraqi desert, but no one was seriously hurt.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers insisted Friday at a Pentagon briefing that fighting along key U.S. supply lines was not militarily significant. He and Rumsfeld said the push to Baghdad would not be derailed.

Rumsfeld hinted the United States had operatives working inside Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

To underscore the message that the war is going well, Myers showed a map of Iraq detailing about 40 percent of the country that he said was no longer under Saddam's control.

The areas included Kurdish zones in the north which have been autonomous since the early 1990s, a large swath of Iraq's western desert where special operations forces have been hunting for missiles, and a triple-peaked area of southern Iraq where the Army and Marines are pushing toward the capital.

The U.S.-led coalition also has air supremacy over about 95 percent of Iraq, Myers said. The exception: The capital and Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, where surface-to-air missile sites and other air defenses have not been completely knocked out.

Coalition forces have fired more than 650 Tomahawk cruise missiles and dropped more than 5,000 precision-guided bombs on Iraq since the war started, Myers said.

A Tomahawk strike hit Iraq's Information Ministry headquarters in downtown Baghdad early Saturday, Central Command said. Footage from video cameras stationed on the building showed a bright flash and a thunderous explosion that shook masonry off nearby buildings. At midmorning, however, the ministry building appeared intact.

In Kuwait, officials said Iraq fired a missile of its own into a Kuwait City shopping mall. The missile was the first to hit the city since the United States launched its invasion of neighboring Iraq on March 20.

The coalition has used its air superiority to pound the Republican Guard, particularly elements of the Medina and Hammurabi divisions stationed to the north, west and south of Baghdad.

Myers said Republican Guard units defending the city were dug in. "They could be consolidating to make a defense. It doesn't make any difference. The outcome is certain," he said.

In the north, airstrikes have focused not only on Iraqi military targets but on the positions of Ansar al-Islam, a radical armed group the United States says is linked to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

photo credit and caption:

Reporters, at bottom right, cover the launch of a U.S. F-14 Tomcat from the flight deck of the USS Harry S. Truman heading for a mission over Iraq, Saturday, March 29, 2003. As some units on the field have been ordered an operational pause for a chance to resupply, U.S.-led coalition aircraft and missile strikes continue over Iraq in operation "Iraqi Freedom." (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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