U.S. Marines dig trenches Thursday to protect a military convoy following Wednesday's attack on the road, about 90 miles north of Nasiriyah.

With the skies finally clear after two days of sandstorms and good weather forecast for the next few days, U.S. commanders said allied forces would quickly intensify pressure on the Iraqi military Thursday. Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes wiped out a large convoy of Iraqi troops near Najaf early in the day as it approached the 3rd Infantry Division. “YOU’LL CERTAINLY see us increase in our activity in the coming hours, days, given the clearing weather,” an official at U.S. Central Command said, speaking on condition on anonymity.

       The Washington Post reported Thursday that despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces during the first week, military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand in Iraq and in Kuwait.

FRIENDLY FIRE?
       The military official Thursday also confirmed that coalition forces have suffered “multiple casualties” in several incidents but refused to give specifics on numbers or locations.
       Near the southern Iraq city of Nasiriyah, more than 30 U.S. Marines were injured, two seriously, in an accidental exchange of fire between U.S. units, according to reporters for French and British media who were with the Marines. 
       In a news briefing at Central Command, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said U.S. officials were investigating the report. 
       In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, about 30 miles south of the Turkish border, Rangers and other paratroopers from the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade were busy securing the Harir airfield where supplies and support personnel will arrive.
        Their airdrop overnight — leaping from low-flying C-17 transport planes — marked the first large deployment of U.S. ground troops in the region. Previously, only small groups of U.S. special operations forces were operating along with allied Kurdish fighters.
       “The mission was to support the infiltration, ... to get them safely on the deck, which we did,” said Cmdr. Ed Langford of Virginia Beach, Va., who flew in the first wave of air attacks. 

HEADING TO BAGHDAD        In central Iraq, U.S. forces moved closer to Baghdad on several routes; one of the Army columns was 10 miles long. Battles with Iraqi troops flared in several areas, but troop movements overall were easier due to a break in the fierce sandstorms that had buffeted soldiers.        Near Najaf, about 80 miles southwest of Baghdad, a convoy of Iraqi troops apparently miscalculated when it attempted to challenge the lead elements of the U.S. 3rd Infantry.        NBC’s David Bloom reported that the Iraqi troops were hammered when F-18s and F-14s hit the lead elements of the convoy to stall them and then two B-52s dropped over 50 bombs, decimating the column.        There were no details on the scale of the Iraqi casualties.        Bloom also said that officers said the Iraqis were wearing American-type uniforms, which has forced the coalition to toughen its rules of engagement to prepare soldiers for possible subterfuge by Iraq.

       On Wednesday, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz told NBC that the military would use any kind of tactics it deemed necessary to defeat the British and U.S. forces. 

The 3rd Infantry Division, approaching Baghdad from the southwest, makes up one of the main prongs in the advance on Baghdad. The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is taking an eastern route, and Pentagon officials told NBC News that they were continuing their advance toward the city of Al Kut, about 140 miles outside Baghdad.

PREPARING FOR BAGHDAD
       Military officials say they expected the troops to encounter the heaviest fighting of the war as they neared Baghdad. And the challenges would not end if they succeeded in defeating the Republican Guard and entering the city.
       U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, said Wednesday that it had evidence that the Iraqi regime had wired explosives on many of the bridges around Baghdad for destruction in anticipation of a coalition attack. That tactic appears aimed at making it difficult for U.S. forces to move heavy armor through the city of 5 million, forcing the troops to engage in difficult and dangerous urban warfare on foot.
       Baghdad was jolted by more explosions Thursday; aircraft were heard overhead while anti-aircraft fire lit up the dawn sky. 

A witness reported that a missile hit an area not far from a television building and the Information Ministry. Buildings shook, but there did not appear to be any damage.
       Distant explosions, some sounding like artillery shells, could be heard in the city in the morning.
       Iraqi TV was still on, but the picture was poor, and it was unclear whether the signal was being received outside Baghdad.
       In southern Iraq, British forces destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks that streamed out of the besieged city of Basra overnight, according to a British spokesman, Group Capt. Al Lockwood. Basra has been ringed by British troops trying to secure the city and deliver humanitarian aid to trapped residents. 

MAKING CHARGES
       In the battle for public opinion, both Iraqi and coalition officials accused the other side of violating the laws of war.
       Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iraqi troops had executed some U.S. prisoners of war. An Iraqi government statement accused U.S. forces of taking civilians as POWs.
       Iraq’s health minister, Omeed Medhat Mubarak, said 36 civilians were killed and 215 injured Wednesday in allied airstrikes on Baghdad, including what Iraq said was a U.S. cruise missile strike that hit a market area.
       Nationwide, Mubarak said about 350 civilians had been killed and more than 4,000 injured since the war began. “Neither the Bush administration nor their bombs are ‘smart,’” said Mubarak, accusing the United States and Britain of deliberately targeting civilians.
       Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, addressing the daily press briefing at the Central Command headquarters in Qatar, denied U.S. responsibility for the bombing in Baghdad on Wednesday in which 14 civilians were killed, saying it may have been caused by a stray Iraqi missile or deliberate Iraqi sabotage.
       “We won’t have a final answer until we’re in Baghdad ourselves,” he said.
       Among the coalition military, the Pentagon has said that of the 24 Americans killed in the war on Iraq, 19 died in combat, while five died in accidents or other non-hostile situations, officials said.
       Britain lists 22 soldiers as dead or missing.
       Hundreds of Iraqi fighters are reported to have been killed during the first week of the war. One U.S. commander said his troops had left around 300 dead during clashes outside Najaf in south-central Iraq. 

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
 British officials reluctantly postponed the start of a sea-borne relief operation Thursday after discovering Iraqi mines in the shipping channel leading to the recently captured Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.
 The discovery of chemical protection suits at an Iraqi command post suggests that Iraq was prepared to use weapons of mass destruction against advancing coalition forces, British officials said Thursday. Soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment found about a hundred chemical weapons protection suits and respirators in an Iraqi command post, said Adm. Michael Boyce, chief of the defense staff.
 At his retreat at Camp David, President Bush conferred on strategy and postwar plans with his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. One potentially divisive topic: how big a role to give the United Nations in Iraq’s reconstruction.
 A senior diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia has resigned in protest over Washington’s decision to wage war in Iraq and U.S. policy toward the Middle East and North Korea. Ann Wright, who as deputy chief of mission was the embassy’s second-in-command, also criticized the “unnecessary curtailment of civil rights” in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.
 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Thursday the United States and Britain, waging a war on Iraq, would never be able to subdue the whole country and warned Syria might be the next target on Washington’s list. In a front-page interview with Lebanon’s as-Safir newspaper, Assad, a staunch opponent of the war, also slammed a proposed “road map” for Israeli-Palestinian peace as falling short of Palestinian rights and said it would fail.