President Saddam Hussein has called on the Iraqi people to take part in jihad or holy war against US-UK troops.
In a defiant television statement, read on his behalf by the Information Minister, Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi leader denounced the Anglo-American invaders as 'Satans' and presented resistance as a religious duty.
No explanation was given for the failure of Saddam to deliver the statement in person.
Rumsfeld says no talks short of surrender
Meanwhile US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that the only discussions the US and Britain will hold with the Iraqi government will be for its unconditional surrender.
During a Pentagon briefing, Mr Rumsfeld accused Iraqi government officials of spreading rumours that the US-led invasion force in the Iraq war had entered into a cease-fire negotiation with Saddam's government.
US missile strike kills 11 civilians near Hilla
Latest news agency reports from Iraq say that a US missile strike on a jeep has killed at least 11 civilians, mostly children, near the town of Hilla in central Iraq.
Iraqi hospital officials are claiming that 48 more civilians, including women and children, have been killed and 310 wounded in the town in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile Baghdad and its surrounding areas are again reported to be under bombardment by US-led forces.
The Iraqi Information Minister said that 19 people were killed in the city overnight, with 5 more dying today and more than 100 injured in air strikes on the city since yesterday evening.
Mr al-Sahhaf said 56 civilians were killed across the country in US-led air raids.
The Iraqi Information Minister also said that several people were wounded when US warplanes attacked two Iraqi buses.
The buses were carrying international volunteers, some of them American, who were operating as 'human shields'.
Fierce fighting in Hindiyah
Fierce fighting is also taking place at a number of locations in Iraq, including the town of Hindiyah on the Euphrates, where American forces are engaged with units of the Republican Guard defending the approaches to Baghdad.
To the south in Nasiryah a US patrol reportedly destroyed at least two Iraqi tanks near a bridge across the Euphrates River.
In the town of Najaf the Iraqi military say they killed 10 American troops and destroyed nearly 20 vehicles.
Eight civilians killed at checkpoints
US military officials have insisted on the right of their troops in Iraq to defend themselves after US soldiers killed 8 Iraqi civilians at checkpoints in the past 24 hours.
US Marines shot dead an unarmed Iraqi driver at a military checkpoint in southern Iraq today.
Just hours earlier seven Iraqi women and children were shot dead by US soldiers at a checkpoint near the city of Najaf. An investigation is taking place into the killings.
The seven were killed after the vehicle in which they were travelling apparently failed to stop at a checkpoint near the central city of Najaf.
An eye-witness account in The Washington Post said the death toll was ten, and that the US unit failed to respond to orders to fire warning shots.
Deaths will not change US policy
At US Central Command in Qatar, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks described the deaths as tragic but said there would be no change in the rules of engagement at checkpoints.
However British military officials have acknowledged that the Coalition Forces efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population have been undermined by the shootings.
The US has apologised for the fatal shooting by its soldiers. Major General Buford Blount, Commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said 'We're very concerned about it and very sorry that it happened.'
Air raid sirens in Kuwait
Air raid sirens sounded in Kuwait this morning.
The all-clear signal was sounded several minutes later and no explosions were heard.
A spokesman for the Kuwaiti army said earlier that a Patriot missile was fired earlier, after a monitoring station reported a hostile object in the skies over the north of the country.
Baghdad claims Coalition casualties
Iraq's armed forces said this morning they had inflicted heavy casualties on British forces near the southern city of Basra.
A spokesman also claimed they had knocked out seven US tanks and their crews around the central city of Najaf.
A British military spokesman said one British soldier was killed overnight.
He did not say where, but most of the British troops are engaged in operations in the south around Basra.
