Massive cruise missile strikes took out dozens of buildings in  Baghdad and across Iraq on Friday as the Pentagon began its  promised “shock and awe” aerial campaign. Fires and huge  plumes of smoke filled the skies of downtown Baghdad

AT THE PENTAGON, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said that “a massive air campaign throughout Iraq” had been launched.        “Several hundred military targets will be hit over the coming hours,” he said.        Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S.-led forces had intensified talks with individual Iraqi military units over surrender conditions, though no direct country-to-country talks on a general surrender were under way.        He said it was possible the United States “has not been sufficiently persuasive.”        In Baghdad, Arnett reported only an hour earlier that many missiles had struck the presidential compound of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.        “It’s gone up totally in smoke ... it’s just blown apart,” said Arnett, who is reporting for National Geographic Explorer and NBC News.        He estimated that 25 buildings were blown up in a matter of 10 minutes. Other buildings that were on fire included offices of the Council of Ministers and a government bunker.

TWO MARINES DIE IN COMBAT 
Also Friday, two U.S. Marines were killed in combat, Pentagon officials said. One of the slain was from the U.S. 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Lt. Col. Neal Peckham, a British military spokesman, said Friday. 
       Details of the incident were unclear. However, a fellow soldier, along with an Associated Press reporter, said the Marine was shot in the stomach while his company was patrolling around a burning oil pumping station in southern Iraq.
       The second Marine was killed during fighting to secure the Iraqi port town of Umm Qasr. The two Marines were the first combat deaths in the war. 
On Thursday, coalition forces suffered their first known noncombat casualties of the war when 12 U.S. and British troops were killed as a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter went down inside Kuwait.
       The officials said the helicopter was a CH-46E Sea Knight medium-lift craft that did not come under hostile fire. It carried eight British commandos and a crew of four Americans. None survived.
       Nearly 300,000 U.S. and British forces have been deployed in and around Iraq to overthrow Saddam, who defied a U.S. ultimatum to go into exile by Wednesday or face military action.
AIRFIELDS TAKEN
       The allied forces concentrated their attack on southern Iraq, but U.S. officials said Friday that American forces also seized important airfields in the west of the country.
The airfields, known as H-2 and H-3, in far western Iraq, were taken without much resistance from Iraqi troops, defense officials said on condition of anonymity. But they called control of the installations “tentative.”

And while it appeared that the British and U.S. forces were making ground Friday, the Iraqis weren’t giving up without a fight.
       The First Marine Division needed air support to suppress Iraqi mortar and small arms fire while seizing Route 80, which leads from Kuwait to Basra.
       “Every now and then they pop off to let us know they’re still there,” Lt. Col. Steve Holmes, a Marine in charge of clearing berms for troops and armor to enter Iraq.
       Supported by Cobra attack helicopters and howitzers, Marine tanks and armored vehicles rolled down Route 80 through the demilitarized zone between Kuwait and Iraq. 

PORT CAPTURED        Myers said U.S. and British forces had pushed 100 miles into Iraq from Kuwait, along the way capturing Umm Qasr, which is about 20 miles inland from the tip of the al-Faw peninsula and which handles the export of Iraqi oil supplies.        Reuters filed a photo of a Marine raising the Stars and Stripes over the port. Some time later, Marines returned and removed the flag. No reason was given, but Washington has consistently stressed that U.S. and Britisn forces want to liberate Iraq, not occupy it.        The ground attack on Umm Qasr followed a night of intense shelling by U.S. and British forces in the area.

ALLIED CONFIDENCE
The apparent early gains coupled with signs of disarray within the Iraqi leadership bolstered political and military leaders of the coalition forces.
       At Central Command in the gulf nation of Qatar, the main spokesman for the British forces adopted a confident tone, telling reporters that he expected forces to reach Baghdad in less than a week.
       “If I were a betting man, which I’m not — hopefully in the next three or four days,” Capt. Al Lockwood said.
       In a boost to the U.S. administration, a new poll showed that about two-thirds of Americans approve of President Bush’s handling of the war and think he did enough diplomatically before invading Iraq.
       The ABC-Washington Post poll found he president’s job approval rating at 67 percent, up from pre-war polls that showed his approval level ranging from the mid 50s to about 60 percent.
       For the second straight day, Bush summoned reporters and photographers into a White House meeting Friday but did not field questions. He did not offer details about Saddam’s whereabouts or the status of the Iraqi regime, but said, “We are making progress.” 

SADDAM’S FATE
The whereabouts of Saddam Hussein remains a mystery. 
       U.S. officials had suggested he might have been killed or injured in the opening foray of the conflict, a strike of a building in the Iraqi capital where the president and his inner circle were believed to be meeting.
       On Friday, U.S. intelligence officials said an analysis of TV footage showing Saddam Hussein, broadcast after the first U.S. strike, indicated it was the Iraqi leader speaking — although they suggested the tape could have been recorded in anticipation of the strike.
       Other officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had strong indications no one was in charge of Iraq’s government and armed forces. They didn’t offer evidence to back this claim.