The car bomb attack and heavy bombardment of Baghdad came as peace activists geared up for a weekend of massive anti-war protests, and as an Iraqi missile hit Kuwait City for the first time since the conflict began on March 20.

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

The five US soldiers were killed when a taxi driver detonated his vehicle at a checkpoint north of Najaf, a holy Shiite Muslim town located 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the capital, US Captain Andrew Valles said.

The men, from the Third Infantry Division, approached the vehicle after the driver indicated he needed assistance, Valles said. The suicide attacker then set off the bomb.

In Baghdad, waves of massive explosions rocked the city center and its outskirts, with a dawn missile attack causing severe damage to the information ministry, the heart of Iraq's propaganda machine.

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

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

The edifice houses the foreign 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 strip Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction and depose Saddam.

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.

A US military spokesman at the command headquarters in Qatar said they were investigating Friday's strike on the market "to learn the truth of the matter".

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.

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 nearly struck 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. Movie theaters, however, 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.

The armored Medina Division of Iraq's elite Republican Guard was reportedly in position around Karbala, guarding the western approaches to 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's headquarters in central Iraq, adding the war could drag on much longer than originally predicted.

Bush nonetheless said Friday the US-led forces were making "great progress," and US Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, praised the broad battle plan as "brilliant."

The Pentagon said 34 US soldiers had been killed so far during the campaign, with another 104 wounded, 15 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 thousands marching Saturday in Bangladesh, Malaysia and South Korea.

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.

A British military spokesman named Iraq's ruling Baath party as the main objective in Basra, Iraq's second city, adding that a senior party official had been captured and was being questioned.

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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