Four thousand volunteers from 23 Arab countries are ready to carry out suicide attacks against American and British troops who are waging war against Iraq.

According to the New York Times today, spokesperson for the Iraqi armed forces Gen Hazem al-Rawi said that these volunteers will follow the example set by a man who carried out a suicide bombing against four US soldiers o­n Saturday.

"They have pledged never to return to their homelands, insisting that they remain in Iraq after their martyrdom," the daily quoted al-Rawi as saying.

"It is our duty to chase the invaders from Iraq at any price " he added.

As for the man who carried out the first suicide attack, he was awarded two posthumous award by the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Further advances

Meanwhile BBC reported that the invading US and UK forces are making advances in Iraq, encircling the key central town of Najaf and seizing an opposition stronghold near Basra.

The report said that the coalition bombing of Baghdad is now almost constant, with its correspondents saying the intensity of the raids has also increased.

CNN

reported that the US Air Force made a total of about 1,800 sorties o­n Sunday with about 75 runs an hour. The Air Force had been averaging 1,000 sorties a day.

The commander of the US-led war, General Tommy Franks, said progress so far had been "truly remarkable".

But Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said from Iraq's point of view the war was also "going very well".

The Bahrain-based Gulf Daily New also said that round-the-clock air strikes hammered Baghdad as the US military sought to break the elite Republican Guard units entrenched in the sprawling city's outskirts

In Washington, the US military said it had bombed the main training site for Iraqi Fedayeen paramilitary forces in eastern Baghdad, a presidential palace, an intelligence complex and surface-to-air missile sites.

And from the Iraqi perspective, the Arab daily reported the Iraq military saying it had destroyed two US or British tanks and nine armoured personnel carriers over the past 24 hours and shot down five unmanned drone reconnaissance planes. There was no immediate British or American reaction.

Pushing towards Basra

Meanwhile the International Herald Tribune reported that British forces were pushing into Basra with the help of that southern city's besieged citizens.

The daily quoted defense officials as saying that the city has "become a redoubt for an outnumbered but persistent core of Saddam loyalists who have held off the allies for about a week".

The report also said that the British had captured an Iraqi general and killed an Iraqi colonel. An official in Baghdad denied both claims.

Group Captain Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces in the Gulf, said the general was believed to have been sent to the southern city to ''try and strengthen the resolve among the Ba'ath Party militia and the paramilitaries that are operating in the area.''

And in Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the British "are in Basra, they are getting increasing assistance from the local people as to where the death squads are located, where the thugs are ... and they're systematically working them over".

BBC

also quoted head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, saying that a northern Iraqi camp now in the hands of coalition forces could have been used by Islamic terrorists to make poisons. US intelligence sources also said that Islamic militants, including Yemenis, Palestinians and Chechens, have joined Iraqis fighting in the central town of Nasiriyah.

Closer to Karbala

and Nasiriyah

The Washington Post today reported that army troops spearheading the US invasion pushed north to within several miles of Karbala, fighting running battles with Iraqi soldiers and militiamen along a key road and calling in artillery barrages to counter mortar attacks.

By day's end, the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade had taken control of a stretch of Highway 9 about 20 kilometers west of the town of Hilla and 32 kilometers southwest of the ruins of Babylon.

"The area is about six miles from the Euphrates River, beyond which lie the southern approaches to Baghdad guarded by the Medina Division of President Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard," said the report.

And the ABCnews reported that thousands of US Marines and soldiers are an hour's drive away from the Iraqi capital but major US action across a 100-mile front just south of Baghdad may still be days away.

"The Marines have struggled to pacify the southern city of Nasiriyah, delaying their move north and east to Al Kut, where they expect to engage the Baghdad Division of the Iraqi Republican Guards this week."