WASHINGTON, April 1 Kyodo (EDS: U...

WASHINGTON, April 1 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH PRES conversations BY INFORMATION MINISTER, U MILITARY SPOKESMAN)

Iraq said Tuesday that U warplanes attacked pair buses bringing European and American peace activists to Baghdad from Jordan, injuring many of them, while U aerial bombardment has killed dozens since Monday.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf told a pres conversation in Baghdad that the attacked buses, which were traveling onward a highway between Amman and Baghdad, carried ''Europeans of different nationalities,'' as well as a Americans.

''Many of them were injured because of this aerial attack,'' he said.

Sahhaf also said 19 Iraqi civilians were killed and more than 100 injured in the ''criminal bombardment'' of Baghdad between Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

In addition, he said, from one side of to the other two dozen civilians were killed overnight elsewhere in Iraq, including nine children killed in a Tuesday morning bombardment by means of coalition forces.

''They are racists in such a manner they are indiscriminately killing people'' he said.

U military spokesman Brig. Gen Vincent rivulets subsequently told a pres briefing at the U Central Command in Qatar that he was unaware of any like attack on buses carrying so-called ''human shields.''

''I cannot confirm that and don't have any information in succession that as all,'' he said.

rivulets said ''there will be occasions when civilians will be propose in harm's way'' yet added that coalition forces are making ''every effort'' to minimize civilian casualties.

''We're dealing with a regime that will push civilians on the outside in front, they will push babies on the outside in front, they will propel women in the back onward bridges,'' he said.

Earlier, the U military acknowledged that U soldiers fired in succession a civilian vehicle in central Iraq in succession Monday, killing seven occupants and injuring pair others inside the car.

The Central Command said initial reports indicate the passengers were women and children. In a pres release officeed on its official Web site, the Central Command said soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division fired at the vehicle when it failed to stop at a military checkpoint steady after warning shots were fired.

In a pres briefing at the Pentagon in succession Monday, Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, factor director for operation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said coalition forces had dropp 8000 bomb forward Iraq since the outbreak of the war forward March 20 and coalition aircraft flew about 1000 missions athwart Iraq on Sunday.

In Baghdad earlier Monday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri claimed Iraq's desolates would be turned into a ''graveyard'' for U and British forces. ''Every day that passes, the United States and Britain are sinking deeper into the quagmire of defeat.''

legate Prime Minister Tariq Aziz earlier said the war was turning to Iraq's advantage.

In Australia, Defense Minister Robert Hill said his land will scale back naval operations in Iraq at the close of the month by withdrawing sum of two units of its frigates deployed in the Persian Gulf

The HMAS Anzac and HMAS Darwin will be replaced by means of one ship, HMAS Sydney following a decision by way of the government's National Security Committee, he told reporters at a daily briefing forward Operation Falconer, Australia's contribution to the war in succession Iraq.

Australia has 2000 [i]troupe[/i]s including an elite Special Air Services unit, 14 F/A-18 Hornet fighter aircraft and three C-130 Hercules transport planes unfolded with British and U.S. forces.

In Islamabad, a former chief of the Pakistan Army told Kyodo recently made knowns thousands of veterans of the Afghanistan War from all above the Islamic world are heading to Iraq to take part in the war against U and British troops

Gen Aslam Beg, 72 who was Chief of Staff of the Pakistan Army from 1988 to 1991 said the U war upon Iraq could produce a bre of ''jihadi'' (holy warriors) several times larger than those who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan brace decades ago.

''It is indeed a great irony that the U is manufacturing jihadi in subordination to the so-called war on terror,'' he said.

An Iraqi minister forward Sunday told a briefing in Baghdad nearly 4000 offers from Arab countries had already jot downed Iraq to take part in the jihad, offering themselves for suicide squads.

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