Buildings in the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad lie in ruins after a U.S. warplane dropped bombs  on the site.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S.-led forces launched a thundering assault Tuesday on symbolic and leadership targets in Baghdad, raising more questions about the condition of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his regime and military.  U.S. warplanes unleashed two satellite-guided bombs on the ruling Baath party headquarters and Iraqi Information Ministry on Tuesday afternoon, hours after targeting Special Republican Guard and Republican Guard headquarters in the Iraqi capital, U.S. Army sources told CNN.  These strikes came a day after a U.S. B-1 bomber dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on a building in a Baghdad residential neighborhood suspected to contain Iraqi leaders, including Saddam and his two sons.

Sources said the blast in the Mansour neighborhood killed nine people, wounded 13 others and destroyed a restaurant and apartments.  "I don't know whether he survived," President Bush said Tuesday at a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Northern Ireland. "The only thing I know is that he's losing power. ... Saddam Hussein will be gone."  Coalition officials described a one-sided war zone in Baghdad, with U.S. forces able to move at will through the city and warplanes flying continuously overhead.	People walk past rubble after U.S. bombs fell on a  building in the residential neighborhood of Mansour.
The coalition assault has left Iraq with 19 tanks out of its fleet of 800, a senior U.S. official said. The official said that remnants of the Republican Guard continue to battle around Baghdad but that they have no armored units and are no longer organized.  Early Tuesday, A-10 Warthog jets dropped bombs at five- to eight-second intervals over Baghdad, dipping in and out of low-cloud cover. The A-10s also strafed Iraqi positions with 30 mm cannons in the center of the city, Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Ron Martz told CNN.	People walk in the ruins of Mansour after U.S.  bombs fell on the residential neighborhood.
The action was similarly intense on the ground as U.S. forces continued to advance and fortify their positions deep inside the city.  In central Baghdad, flames shot from the upper floors of a high-rise, Saddam's Ministry of Planning building, during a firefight Tuesday morning between a U.S. armored unit and Iraqi forces, Abu Dhabi TV reported.	A building in Mansour was severely damaged by  U.S. bombs, which the U.S. says were intended  for Iraqi leadership targets
The conflict in Baghdad claimed the lives of three journalists Tuesday. One Al-Jazeera reporter died in a U.S. airstrike on a building housing Arab media, the Qatar-based TV network reported. A Spanish TV cameraman and Reuters cameraman were killed and several other journalists were wounded in an explosion at the Palestine Hotel, according to Reuters and the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp.  U.S. military officials said U.S. forces responded to sniper fire from various floors at the hotel.	A bulldozer prepares to clean up the remains  of a building in Mansour.
U.S. Marines continued their slow but steady advance into southeastern Baghdad. The units, backed by close air support, met sporadic Iraqi resistance at an industrial complex that included a soft-drink bottling factory, brewery and cigarette factory, reported CNN's Martin Savidge, who is embedded with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. Marines also attacked and seized the Rasheed military airfield in southeast Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at a U.S. Central Command briefing Tuesday.	A palm tree lies against a building damaged  during the U.S. airstrike on the Mansour neighborhood.

• The Iraqi people -- not the coalition or the United Nations -- will run the new Iraq, Blair insisted as he and Bush were concluding talks in Belfast on post-war Iraq, the Middle East and Northern Ireland. However, the United Nations should have a vital role in Iraq's reconstruction, Blair said.

• Members of Jessica Lynch's family said the former prisoner of war is in high spirits and in good medical condition after visiting her at a U.S. medical facility in Germany. Lynch's family said she is unaware of the media frenzy over her April 1 rescue. (Full story) 

• U.S. Marines in southeastern Baghdad found scores of chemical suits, as well as masks and a box of atropine injectors, that appeared to have been hastily abandoned Tuesday in a field that coalition airstrikes targeted, CNN's Savidge reported. 

A Russian convoy that came under fire over the weekend may have deviated from its planned evacuation route, U.S. Army V Corps senior commanders told the National Journal. U.S. military officials said they understood the convoy would travel west on Highway 10 out of Baghdad, but the group went farther north -- possibly into the thick of a firefight. (Full story) 

• The British military has begun efforts to form an indigenous civil administration in Basra province with help from a tribal leader. A local sheik who approached British officials will form a committee to chart the future government of the southeastern Iraqi region, Col. Chris Vernon said. (Full story) 

• U.S. Special Forces are trying to seize a strategic highway that links the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, according to CNN's Ben Wedeman. The strategy is to cut off and isolate the cities rather than going into them, Wedeman said. (Full story) 

• The Iraqi National Congress, a group that opposes Saddam's regime, said its forces have joined the military campaign. A unit called the 1st Battalion Free Iraqi Forces, made up of 700 troops, began deployment near Nasiriya in the south, and the number of forces in central and southern Iraq is expected to be increased.