Key developments in the Iraq crisis

Here are the latest developments in the Iraq crisis:

:: US and British tanks and armoured vehicles rolled to within nine miles of Basra, Iraq’s second biggest city.

:: Huge explosions shook the centre of Iraq’s capital before dawn today, a day after the start of America’s long-awaited massive aerial campaign.

:: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants were “starting to lose control of their country”.

:: An entire Iraqi division, the 51st Infantry, surrendered to coalition troops. The unit consisted of 8,000 men and as many as 200 tanks.

:: Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said most of those captured by Allied forces were civilians, not soldiers. He claimed Iraqi troops had destroyed five tanks and that more than 200 Iraqis had been injured, including women, children and other civilians.

:: Two Royal Navy helicopters collided over the Persian Gulf, and seven crew members were killed. The accident did not result from enemy fire, British officials said. A day earlier, eight British and four US Marines died when their helicopter crashed south of Umm Qasr.

:: Turkey, despite US opposition, sent 1,000 troops into northern Iraq to bolster its military presence and prevent Iraqi Kurds from creating an independent state, a Turkish military official said.

:: At the United Nations, Iraqi ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri accused Secretary General Kofi Annan of aiding the US and British attack by withdrawing UN peacekeepers and the weapons inspectors.