The Baghdad office of Iraq's ruling Ba'ath Party was hit by a Coalition air strike today, killing eight people including several civilians, it has been reported.
The blast in Baghdad's Mansour district occurred at around noon (3 p.m. Irish time), demolishing the party's neighbourhood office and several nearby houses
Local residents said they had pulled eight bodies from the wreckage, including Ba'ath Party militia members and several civilians.
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Earlier the US said it had dropped two 4,600-pound "bunker-buster" bombs on a downtown Baghdad communications tower.
It was the first use of the big bombs in a week-long pounding of the Iraqi capital. US-led jets and ships have used more than 5,000 bombs and missiles against Baghdad and across Iraq in the war so far.
The US military announced from the Gulf that the radar-avoiding stealth jet, one of the most advanced weapons in America's arsenal, struck a large communications link tower on the east bank of the Tigris River with two precision-guided bombs at 12.30 a.m. (9.30 p.m. Thursday Irish time) in Baghdad.
Later the Kurdish-controlled town of Chamchamal came under a shelling attack, apparently from Iraqi forces who had retreated yesterday before to the oil hub of Kirkuk.
The attack surprised local Kurds, whose "peshmerga" fighters had earlier poured across the former Iraqi frontline and moved about 15 km west along the road towards Kirkuk.
Two large explosions hit hilltops around Chamchamal at around 5.30 p.m. (2.30 p.m. Irish time) followed by a third minutes later that hit a Kurdish checkpoint near the centre of town.
During the next 30 minutes another four bombs fell, three missing their target and one hitting a small suburb of the town. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.
Earlier, the first large-scale delivery of humanitarian aid arrived in Iraq. The British naval supply vessel Sir Galahad was due to unload 200 tonnes of aid in Basra but because of resistance to British efforts to capture the city, the aid has been diverted to the port city of Um Qasr.
Aid has been arriving in southern Iraq from Kuwait for a number of days, with British troops supervising its distribution amid scenes of people mobbing trucks, trying to grab what water and food they can.
Troops overseeing aid centres on the outskirts of Basra claim Iraqi military fired mortars on fleeing civilians after pledging "safe passage" out of the city. The Iraqis have denied the claim.
As British forces struggle to subdue resistance in Basra, US concerns over the pace of its advance on the capital, Baghdad, is represented in their decision to send 120,000 more troops to the Gulf.
A senior US army general said fierce Iraqi resistance and guerrilla-type tactics, combined with the invasion force's overstretched supply lines, meant numbers on the ground were too thin. He also said the move reflected a belief that the conflict will take longer than forecast.
The Iraqi Defence Minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, reacted by saying the "invaders" could surround the capital in coming days but they would have to fight for the capital street by street.
"We set up our [main] defences in Baghdad. It will be no surprise that in five to 10 days they will be able to encircle all our positions in Baghdad," he told a news conference.
"But they have to come into the city eventually . . . God willing, Baghdad will be impregnable. We will fight to the end and everywhere. History will record how well Iraqis performed in defence of their capital," Mr Ahmed said.
US troops are preparing for an intense battle with the Republican Guard near the Shi'ite holy city Kerbala, about half way between the city of Najaf and Baghdad. It could prove to be the first large-scale engagement of the war and is expected to take place within the next 48 to 72 hours.
The official casualty count for coalition forces is 29 US servicemen killed and 17 missing. Twenty British servicemen killed, with two missing. Casualties on the Iraqi side both civilian and military are not known.
Elsewhere, Chief UN weapons inspector Mr Hans Blix said on today his team was willing to go back into Iraq after the war is over to verify independently whether Baghdad holds banned weapons of mass destruction.
Agencies