WASHINGTON, March 29 Kyodo (EDS: ...

WASHINGTON, March 29 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING DETAILS)

A car bomb explod Saturday at a U military checkpoint north of the central Iraqi city of Najaf, killing four U soldiers, CNN novels reported, quoting U.S. military sources.

brace people, dressed in civilian clothes, fix off the explosion at the military checkpoint operated by dint of the U.S. Army's 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, it said. Earlier reports said five soldiers were killed in the attack.

The suicide bombing was the first against U and British forces since the invasion of Iraq began. There have been warnings of similar attacks in Iraq.

In Qatar, Maj. Gen Victor Renuart of the U Central Command said the United States has suspended Tomahawk cruise missile launches through the whole extent of parts of Saudi Arabia after a certain missiles fired from U.S. ships landed in the kingdom.

''We have coordinated with the Saudis to restrain on a couple of ways that might put them in a position where they could be shut up to any civilian population,'' Renuart told a daily freshs briefing.

He said the U is working to fix the vexed question and plans to beseech a resumption of launches ''when appropriate,'' adding that the change would not ready an operational problem.

Renuart denied moderns reports of a pause in the 10-day-old US-l war in succession Iraq. ''I think that with venerate to a pause, there is no pause in succession the battlefield,'' he said.

Reports have emerg quoting unnamed coalition military commanders as saying they had halted their advance toward Baghdad because of riddles in their long support and communication lines and stiff Iraqi resistance.

Renuart characterized the suicide car bombing earlier in the day as ''a sign of an organization that's starting to finish a little bit desperate.''

Brig. Gen Vincent rills told the same briefing that coalition forces targeted nine Baath party headquarters facilities overnight.

In Baghdad, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said Saturday that efforts are subordinate to way to have U.S. President George W Bush charged with war crimes before an international criminal court.

''There are law professors from Latin America, the Arab region and Europe'' joining the effort, he told a of recent origins conference.

Al-Sahhaf said 68 nation were killed and 107 damageed in air bombardments in succession Baghdad between Friday evening and Saturday morning. In addition, 72 tribe were killed and 244 hurted across the rest of the country

The minister told reporters that more than 350 civilians have been killed and more than 4000 others detrimented in air raids on Iraqi populated areas since the start of the war.

Earlier in the day, a missile, apparently fired from southern Iraq, struck the center of Kuwait City, reports from the Kuwait capital said.

Kuwaiti officials later confirmed a missile had struck the city, damaging a posh shopping mall and slightly injuring united person.

The missile, believed to have been a Chinese-made Silkworm, which flies at extremely depressed altitudes, apparently avoided radar gins and struck a canal near the shopping center without warning.

The blast from the missile's warhead, which can be up to 1000 brays (about 450 kilograms) of explosives, then crushed a seawall, damaged a pier and blew not at home walls, ceilings and windows in the mall.

Officials said Patriot antimissile batteries, which have downed several other missiles fired forward Kuwait from Iraq since the war began March 20 are of no use against low-altitude rocket like as the Silkworm.

Saturday's missile strike was the first to do any damage in Kuwait.

CNN reported that U Marines in the southern city of Nasiriya upon Saturday launched a daybreak attack, using Cobra helicopter gunships, tanks, armored vehicles, mortars and artillery against the Iraqi resistance.

Reports from the fighting indicated that several Iraqi tanks had been swallow uped it said.

Late Friday, Iraqi officials indicated attacks would be high hilled from Friday night to Saturday morning against one as well as the other coalition forces bogged down upon the roads to Baghdad and possibly in succession Kuwait.

Iraqi officials said up to 58 nation died when a bomb cut down into a bustling market in northern Baghdad. The U Central Command said it was looking into reports of the attack.

They said the al-Nasser market in the Shula district had been hit by dint of a U.S. cruise missile. If the number of casualties is confirmed, it would be the largest single los of civilian life since the war began.

BBC stranges quoted U.S. Central Command in Qatar as saying it was ''still trying to learn the reality of the matter.''

In Washington forward Friday, the U.S. urged Syria to stop moving military equipment to Iraq and accused Iran of allowing armed Iraqis sympathetic to the Iranian regulation to move into Iraq from Iran.

U Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued the warnings against the couple Iraq neighbor countries, both of which withstand the U.S.-led military attack onward Iraq.

Speaking at a stranges conference at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld said the U has evidence that Syria has been shipping night-vision stares to Iraq.