The heavy bombardment came as an Iraqi missile hit Kuwait City for the first time, landing just offshore but causing serious damage to the country's largest shopping center. Two people were slightly hurt.

With US war plans hampered by dogged Iraqi resistance, coalition forces were regrouping in the central and southern Iraqi desert ahead of a decisive push for the capital and shoring up supply lines.

Following a missile strike Friday on a market that left at least 30 dead, massive explosions rocked Baghdad and its outskirts, with a dawn attack on the information ministry, the heart of Iraq's propaganda machine.

The top floor of the 11-story building in the city center, from which the government maintains iron-fisted control over the media, was competely gutted, but no one was reported injured.

"The ministry of information in Baghdad was targeted by Tomahawk missiles early today (Saturday)," US Central Command said in a statement, adding that an an official damage assessment was not yet available.

The building houses the international press center and the offices of Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, the point man for Iraq's propaganda effort since US-led forces launched their campaign to disarm Iraq and depose Saddam on March 20.

Overnight, near-simultaneous strikes targetted Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, with one of Saddam's multiple presidential palaces in the capital coming under fire.

Baghdad was still reeling from repeated bombing raids on Friday, one of which struck the busy market, killing at least 30 and wounding 47 others, in the largest single loss of civilian life since the outbreak of war.

Dr Harqi Razzuqi, head of An-Nur hospital, put the death toll at 30, telling AFP that most of the victims were women, children and elderly people, but other doctors said as many as 52 had been killed.

Witnesses told AFP the projectile -- a bomb or missile -- struck as local people were doing their evening shopping at the end of the weekly day of prayer in the northeastern part of the capital.

Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Owens, spokesman for the US command headquarters directing the war in Iraq from Qatar, only said the US military was "still trying to learn the truth of the matter."

Washington has accused Iraq of placing military hardware in residential areas, but is keen to limit civilian casualties in a bid to win over the Iraqi population as US-led forces try to break Saddam's 24-year grip on power.

Fourteen civilians were killed Wednesday when missiles hit a working-class Baghdad neighborhood.

In Kuwait City, disaster was narrowly averted when an Iraqi Silkworm missile crashed into the water near the country's largest and most popular shopping mall, causing extensive material damage but only two minor injuries.

The missile hit at about 1:45 am Saturday (2245 GMT Friday), just hours after the shops close to customers, but the movie theaters screen films into the early hours of the morning.

Flames shot up from the site of the explosion. The mall's glass doors and cinema took the brunt of the damage, with the stench of burning metal filling the air in the tiny emirate, the main launch pad for US and British troops.

Kuwait has been the target of several missile attacks since war broke out in neighboring Iraq last week, but all have either intercepted by Patriot missiles or have hit remote desert areas.

The attack came after the US military said its fighters had targeted missile launchers in southern Iraq "to degrade Iraq's ability to strike coalition forces, the Iraqi people, or neighboring countries."

After initially making quick progress toward Baghdad, with some forward units within 80 kilometers (50 miles) of the capital, stiffer than expected Iraqi resistance has forced US-led troops to reassess their next moves.

US forces stepped up the pressure on Iraqi troops by sending the 101st Airborne Division and their Apache attack helicopters into action on Friday against Iraqi positions near Karbala, 80 kilometers southwest of Baghdad.

US President George W. Bush and his top aides vigorously defended their strategy after a senior US field commander gave a downbeat progress report.

"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against," Lieutenant General William Wallace told The Washington Post in an interview at the 101st Airborne Division headquarters in central Iraq.

Asked whether it now looked like the war would be much longer than planners had forecast, Wallace said, "It's beginning to look that way."

Bush, before leaving for a weekend at his Camp David retreat, said the US-led forces were making "great progress," and Myers, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, praised the broad battle plan as "brilliant."

The Pentagon said 28 US soldiers had been killed so far during the campaign, with another 104 wounded, 16 missing and seven taken prisoner. British military sources say 23 of their troops have been killed since the start of the war.

Anti-war demonstrators around the world geared up for another weekend of protests over the US-British campaign to unseat Saddam, with 5,000 marching Saturday in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.

Tens of thousands were expected to turn out later in the day in London, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Athens and other European cities. China's police have given the go-ahead for the country's first protest on Sunday.

On the diplomatic front, the United Nations adopted a resolution allowing the resumption of humanitarian aid for Iraq through its "oil-for-food" program, suspended at the start of the war.

The coalition's effort to bring drinking water and food supplies to the Iraqi people began Saturday in the southern port of Umm Qasr, where Iraqis crowded around a water tanker that arrived from Kuwait aboard a British ship.

In the southern city of Basra, just north of Umm Qasr, British troops were treating civilian casualties who were wounded after coming under mortar fire while trying to flee the besieged port.

Meanwhile, Iran on Saturday denied allegations by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that it was interfering with the US-led war effort, with a government spokesman stressing Tehran's "policy of neutrality."

Rumsfeld charged that military equipment had crossed into Iraq from Syria- and Iran-based rebels. Syria, the only Arab member of the UN Security Council, dismissed the claims.

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