IRAQ got its first post-war cabinet yesterday as the funeral march for Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, killed in the Najaf car bomb massacre, continued its three-day journey to the revered cleric’s final resting place.

A NEW audiotape purported to be of toppled dictator Saddam Hussein broadcast by an Arab satellite station yesterday, called on former soldiers to rise up against American occupation.

US forces today launched a massive operation in Iraq to crush insurgents and capture senior figures from Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime.

AMERICAN troops yesterday made what could be a crucial intelligence discovery - thousands of microfilm cartridges and hundreds of files in a Ba’ath Party enclave in central Baghdad.

THE US military yesterday said it had found the body of the bodyguard of Iraqi commander “Chemical Ali,” but Iraq dismissed reports the military chief himself may have died in an air strike.

CIVILIANS fleeing Iraq’s main southern city of Basra said yesterday increasingly desperate Iraqi fighters were preparing for a last stand against a swelling force of British troops and tanks being readied to fight their way into the city.

THE commander of the US-led war in Iraq denied yesterday that he had asked the Pentagon for more troops before invading the country but sidestepped a question about whether the war might last into the summer.

THE Iraqi port of Umm Qasr was yesterday declared secure following sweeps by Royal Marine commandos, paving the way for the first deliveries of aid to Iraqi civilians.

ABOUT 20 of Saddam Hussein’s henchmen were killed and a key party official captured in a daring night-time raid by British forces in southern Iraq.