This story was updated on 03.29.2003 at 6:55 p.m. ET.]

Hours after a suicide bomber killed four American troops at a checkpoint near the city of Najaf Saturday morning (March 29), Iraq's vice president threatened that suicide bombings will increasingly become a part of the regime's war plan.

The suicide bombing by noncommissioned Iraqi army officer Ali Jaafar al-Noamani was just the first in what promises to be a wave of such attacks, according to Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who said suicide attacks will "be routine military policy. We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land. This is only the beginning and you will hear more good news in coming days."

Five members of the Army's 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division examined a taxi at a checkpoint near the city of Najaf Saturday morning after its driver had waved for help. A moment later, the cab exploded, killing the driver and four soldiers, according to CBS News. Hours later, two Iraqi men who said they had been ordered by Baghdad to commit similar attacks on American troops voluntarily turned themselves in to U.S. forces in southeast Iraq. The incident was later broadcast on CNN.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the U.S. government has CIA paramilitary teams and military Special Operations units in Iraq with orders to kill members of President Saddam Hussein's inner circle, including Baath Party officials and Special Republican Guard commanders.

Among the members of the secret teams — whose numbers are unknown — are snipers and explosives experts, who have already killed a "handful" of individuals

during their one week of operations. The teams join other CIA Special Operations units who are rallying tribal groups to fight Iraqi forces in the North as well as teams searching for weapons of mass destruction. Though government-sanctioned assassinations have been legally restrained since 1976, the CIA has been given tacit approval to undergo such operations since the September 11 attacks, the Post reported.

In a televised interview with CNN, the article's author, Dana Priest, said that Hussein's inner circle of security officers is perhaps more impenetrable than that of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The CIA has set up safe houses for potential defectors from Hussein's camp to protect them from being killed by coalition troops.

In Kuwait City, a shopping area known as Souq Sharq shook from the force of an Iraqi missile exploding nearby, apparently in the sea. A local mall suffered some damage but no one was killed or seriously hurt. The attack took place at approximately 2 a.m. local time when the area was largely vacant.

In Baghdad on Friday, between 35 and 55 people were killed as the result of a large blast. Dozens of others were wounded. It was not clear what caused the explosion, which took place in a neighborhood inhabited primarily by Shiite Muslims. Eyewitnesses said they heard the sound of a cruise missile engine seconds before the blast, raising the possibility that a U.S. Tomahawk missile was responsible. The U.S. says it does not target civilians in its attacks but has not ruled out the possibility that one of its missiles or bombs caused the explosion.

In briefings held Friday and Saturday, Pentagon officials challenged reports that its campaign against the Iraqi regime was off track after a week of fighting and lashed out at the media. "We have seen mood swings in the media from highs to lows to highs and back again, sometimes in a single 24-hour period," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday. "Fortunately, my sense is that the American people have a very good center of gravity and can absorb and balance what they hear."

Rumsfeld and Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, who briefs reporters at Central Command in Qatar, were asked about a published report in which a top field general said his forces had not prepared for the kind of unconventional attacks Iraqi troops have launched. Neither said they had read the report, which appeared in Friday's editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post. General Brooks implied that the general in question might not have had enough information at his disposal to draw a large conclusion about the overall progress of the war.

Also in his conference, Rumsfeld said coalition intelligence knew of military equipment, including night-vision goggles, which has been transported into Iraq from Syria in recent days. He referred to the actions as "hostile Acts" and said the coalition would hold the Syrian government responsible. Syria lies to the west of Iraq.

The bodies of four American servicemen missing in action were found buried in two separate shallow graves in Nasiriya, one of which was "brutalized and mutilated," according to an NBC report. The four were believed to have been executed after they were taken by Iraqi paramilitary forces during an ambush last Sunday, according to published reports. The bodies of five other Marines killed in that same ambush were also recovered from a burned-out vehicle on the outskirts of Nasiriya.

Acting on the same kind of up-to-the-minute "targets of opportunity" information that set off the war in Iraq nearly two weeks ago, two F-15E Strike Eagles dropped laser-guided "bunker buster" bombs on a two-story building in the southern city of Basra on Saturday. The bombs destroyed the building where 200 members of the Fedayeen Saddam — troops said to be intensely loyal to Saddam Hussein — were meeting.

Other key developments in the past 24 hours:

  • Reuters reported that one British soldier was killed and five injured in an apparent "friendly fire" incident in southern Iraq. A spokesperson for British command said unidentified coalition forces fired on three light-armored British vehicles which were patrolling the area north of Basra.

  • The Centers for Disease Control is investigating reports that three people have died of heart attacks after receiving the smallpox vaccine. The CDC is looking into possible links between the vaccines and heart problems found in 17 people. The latest death was of a 55-year-old National Guardsman; 350,000 members of the military have been inoculated to date.

  • The U.S. has suspended the launches of Tomahawk cruise missile over parts of Saudi Arabia after complaints that some of the weapons fired from American ships had landed in the Saudi desert. The problem was a result of misfired missiles from ships in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, officials said.

  • After denying on Friday that the pace of the war had slackened due to overextended supply lines and more resistance than expected from Iraqi troops, Saturday brought one of the heavier nights of bombing since the outset of the war. Two large explosions rocked central Baghdad at approximately 10 p.m. local time and more than 30 other explosions were reported through the night. Bombs were also dropped on the northern city of Mosul.

  • In his Saturday radio address, President Bush warned that the nation should brace for more casualties in the war as troops engage "the most desperate units" of the Iraqi army.

  • Saddam Hussein has fired the commander of Iraq's air defenses after Iraqi missiles failed to launch properly during recent raids, CNN reported on Saturday. U.S. and British officials have suggested that the move may have been in response to a misfired missile that landed in a crowded Baghdad market, reportedly killing 62.

  • A Columbia University professor has drawn fire for his incendiary comments about the war in Iraq. At an anti-war gathering on the campus of the New York university, Nicholas De Genova called for the defeat of U.S. forces and said he would like to see "a million Mogadishus," a reference to the 1993 ambush in Somalia that killed 18 American soldiers. De Genova also referred to patriotic Americans as "white supremacists" and stated that the American flag stands for imperialism.

  • Gunmen ambushed a U.S. Special Forces convoy in the south central town of Geresk, Afghanistan, on Saturday, killing two Special Forces soldiers and wounding one.

  • Anti-war demonstrations continued across the globe on Saturday, including thousands joining in marches in Greece, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, Malaysia and London. French police have been out in force at recent anti-war demonstrations in Paris during which Arab youth have chanted anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slogans, The New York Times reported. Police have seized banners that depicted the Star of David intertwined with the Nazi swastika as well as one bearing the slogan, "Hitler, Bush, Sharon, in the name of God we kill."    
  • There are now 12 distribution points set up for Iraqis to get the humanitarian supplies brought into the port of Umm Qasr, according to MSNBC.

  • Iraqi troops in northern Iraq are reportedly retreating southward toward Baghdad. American and Kurdish forces have been targeting Iraqi positions in the region near the oil town of Kirkuk since earlier this week.

  • The Iraqi regime is moving supplies of chemical weapons into the hands of a key division of Republican Guard troops located south of Baghdad, according to troops who have surrendered to U.S. forces.

  • Seven of the nine oil wells in Iraq's southern oil fields have been extinguished, according to the Pentagon. While the fields were coming under coalition control, some wells were found to be wired with explosives.

  • Americans are becoming increasingly disturbed and exhausted by the images of the war they see on television, according to a study released Friday. Fifty-eight percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the war is "frightening to watch" on broadcast TV in a study conducted by the Pew Center. Forty-two percent of respondents said they find it tiring to watch the war.

  • Halliburton, the company Vice President Dick Cheney led before returning to politics in 2000, is no longer being considered for a $600 million contract to repair Iraq's oil facilities, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. It was not clear if the oil-services firm had taken itself out of the running for the work or failed to submit a viable bid. Halliburton could still play a role as a sub-contractor.

  • The latest casualty count: 34 Americans and 23 British dead. The first wave of wounded U.S. soldiers were flown back to a pair of Washington, D.C.-area hospitals for treatment on Saturday. They are among the 104 American soldiers wounded to date.

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