Troops advance despite sandstorms

U.S. Army forces killed between 150 and 500 Iraqi troops after coming under attack near the central Iraqi city of An Najaf, a senior defense official said.\nBritish forces surrounding Basra fought with more than 1,000 Iraqi militia, trying to secure the key southern city and open the way for delivery of humanitarian aid. British officials said there appeared to be civilian resistance under way against Saddam Hussein's regime.\nSandstorms slowed U.S. and British forces to a crawl and thwarted air missions Tuesday as U.S.-led forces edged closer to Baghdad. In the south, British forces captured a senior Iraqi official and killed 20 fighters.\nTurkey will send forces up to 12 miles into northern Iraq to stop refugees, but only if a crisis situation develops, Turkey's foreign minister said.\nU.S. war strategists are proceeding on the assumption Saddam Hussein is alive even though information on his fate remains inconclusive, Bush administration officials said Tuesday.\nPresident Bush, seeking $74.7 billion as a down payment for war in Iraq, said coalition forces are "on a steady advance" but that he could not predict how long the fighting will last, but stressed "we know its outcome: We will prevail."\nSecretary of Defense Rumsfeld said coalition forces have taken more than 3,500 Iraqi prisoners and humanitarian assistance "food, water and medicine" is already being delivered. He also sought to minimize expectations of a swift end to the war.\nTwo British soldiers were killed in a "friendly fire" incident with a British tank near Basra in southern Iraq, a military commander said Tuesday.\nThe United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday after Arab and nonaligned nations demanded an open meeting to express their opposition to the U.S.-led war on Iraq.\nWith food dwindling for millions of Iraqis, a U.N. aid agency will make its biggest single request for cash • more than $1 billion to help feed the war-stricken nation for about six months.\nEleven of the 20 U.S. military personnel who had died in Iraq by Tuesday were Marines who were stationed at Camp Lejeune, S.C. Most were killed in an ambush near An Nasiriyah, the Pentagon said.\nTwo planes from the Gulf brought 27 U.S. injured soldiers to a military hospital in Germany on Tuesday, including five who were wounded in Iraq.\nThe Army sergeant suspected in a deadly grenade attack in Kuwait will be moved to Germany after a military magistrate found probable cause that the soldier committed the crime, the Army said Tuesday. The attack killed a captain and injured 15 soldiers.