Thirty-three people, including women and children, died and 310 were wounded in a bombing on the outskirts of the farming town of Hilla, 80 kilometers south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, local hospital director Murtada Abbas told AFP. He was speaking at the Hilla hospital where a large number of children lay wounded under blankets on the floor due to a shortage of beds.

Fifteen members of one family were killed nearby late Monday when their pickup truck was blown up by a rocket from a US Apache helicopter in the region of Haidariya near Hilla, the sole survivor of the attack told AFP.

Razek al-Kazem al-Khafaji, sitting among 15 coffins in the local hospital, said he lost his wife, six children, his father, his mother, his three brothers and their wives.

The British and US air strikes on Baghdad accounted for a further 19 people dead and more than 100 wounded since Monday evening, Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf said on the 13th day of the US-led war.

Meanwhile, the air campaign around the capital Baghdad intensified. The southern outskirts of Baghdad were pounded by an especially intense bombardment that sent balls of fire and towers of black smoke into the sky. Massive explosions rocked the area around 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) in what was at least the third wave of bombings since dawn.

Saddam's main presidential palace complex in the Iraqi capital came under fresh daylight bombardment. Iraq brought up reinforcements for Republican Guard units defending the approaches to Baghdad, US officers said, as invasion forces pressed their operations ahead of an expected major push on the capital.

US officers said 200 Iraqis were killed, wounded or captured in the clashes, which broke out overnight Monday near Karbala, 80 kilometers from Baghdad. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warned that as US and British troops advance on Baghdad they will face fierce resistance and could experience setbacks.

"There may be more setbacks for coalition troops," Straw said in a speech to the Newspaper Society annual conference. In the north, coalition warplanes kept up heavy air strikes on Iraqi army positions in and around the oil center of Kirkuk, rebel Kurdish officials said.

In the southern town of Basra, British troops said they were waiting for reinforcements before making a final push to take the city.

Officials in London said a British soldier was killed on duty in southern Iraq, taking to 26 the British death toll since the start of the war.

Iraqi Officials meanwhile said their forces had shot down an Apache at Tarha near the southern city of Basra. He added that Basra, Iraq's second biggest city, remained firmly under Iraqi control, despite a lengthy siege by British forces.

Elsewhere, Sahaf reported continued fierce fighting at Nassiriya and Najaf on the Euphrates River. "(At Najaf) we destroyed seven tanks of those villains. The Saddam Fedayeen destroyed seven armoured personnel carriers," he said, adding that U.S. forces had had to retreat into the desert.


Other Key Developments in the Invasion of Iraq

*_In Northern Iraq, Information Minister, Mohammad Saeed a-Sahaf has said that Iraqi forces had thwarted a landing by British troops near the oil hub of Mosul in the north of the country.

"The British forces which were dropped there have been eliminated mostly on the [battle] field, except for those who fled," he told a news conference, adding that the Iraqis had seized most of the invading troops' equipment and vehicles

*_ Huge explosions were heard across Baghdad early Wednesday, with blasts rocking the center of the city and a plume of white smoke rising from the southern end of the Old Palace grounds in the capital.

*_ U.S. forces battled Republican Guard troops late Tuesday around the Islamic historic city of Karbala, the first major ground fighting with Saddam Hussein's top forces.

*_ In a move highlighting the rift between Washington and Ankara, the United States is withdrawing warplanes from a Turkish air base and is sending them to the Gulf for the war, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

PHOTO CAPTION

A US Navy F-14A Tomcat flies towards Iraq. Fighters from the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier targeted sites south of Baghdad in an intensive bombardment of the Iraqi capital. (AFP) - Apr 01 9:23 AM ET