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BAGHDAD, Friday (AFP,Reuters) - US-led forces pounded Baghdad and other cities Friday with punishing strikes from the air and consolidated positions on the ground as Washington insisted the Iraq war was "on track" despite resistance.

A British ship carrying tonnes of urgently needed humanitarian aid meanwhile put into the captured southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr and officials said they expected distribution of supplies to begin Saturday.

Witnesses said at least eight civilians were killed and 33 others wounded when two missiles slammed into a Baghdad residential neighborhood, destroying or damaging several homes in the vicinity.

That incident followed a night of what was described by reporters and other witnesses in Baghdad as the heaviest bombardment in and near the Iraqi capital since the war began on March 20.

A black blanket of smoke stretched across the sky over Baghdad hours after coalition warplanes and ships took advantage of a break in bad weather to pummel the city with massive bombs and sea-launched cruise missiles.

"Visibility was as sweet as a nut," British Flight Lieutenant Ian Townsend said after returning from a raid on Iraqi armour positions outside the city.

"Baghdad has been in fog for the last two days but now it's wide open."

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf put the civilian death toll from the overnight bombing of Baghdad at seven, with 92 wounded.

The southern city of Nasiriyah also came under fresh assault from the air as US and British forces destroyed an Iraqi command post and dropped at least one 2000-pound (900-kilo) bomb there, an AFP photographer in the area reported.

At least 10 explosions were heard in the city, a vital Euphrates River crossing point. There was no immediate word on casualties there.

Elsewhere, US warplanes hammered targets including tanks and helicopters between Baghdad and the central city of Karbala thought to be held by a crack armored division of Iraq's Republican Guard, coalition officers said Friday.

F/A-18 Hornet and F-14 Tomcat fighters based on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk dropped Thursday a mixture of 1,000-pound (450-kilo) laser-guided bombs, satellite-guided bombs and 1,000-pound unguided "dumb" bombs, they said.

In northern Iraq, Kurdish rebel forces said they had advanced to within 16 kilometers (10 miles) of the strategic city of Kirkuk after clearing scores of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines left behind by retreating Iraqi troops.

"The Iraqi army is finished, Rostam Hamid Rahim, a top commander of the rebel Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said.

PUK military sources said they now planned to consolidate their gains and coordinate with US troops and other Kurdish factions before advancing further.

The territorial gains by the Kurdish rebels in the north came a day after 1,000 US troops were airdropped into the area and amid continuing airborne deployment of hardware including helicopters, fighting vehicles and Humvees.

US and British army and marine forces that were engaged in several fierce battles on the ground over the past week, mainly around towns in southern Iraq, regrouped Friday and moved to shore up supply lines and current positions.

"The long distances we have travelled make it hard to push that amount of logistics -- water, fuel, ammo and chow -- over the vast area that's been covered," said marine First Lieutenant Tom Elssinger.

"It's definitely a tough animal to rope."

As military activity in Kurd-dominated northern Iraq gathered pace, diplomatic sources in Ankara said Turkey and the United States would hold more talks Saturday on contested plans to deploy Turkish troops in the area.

The Wall Street Journal, which has backed US President George W. Bush in his leadership of the campaign, said: "The most important lesson we've learned in the first week of the Iraq war is that it's harder to kill a regime than it is to defeat an army."

The White House dismissed mounting criticism of the war planning and denied ever having indicated that the conflict in Iraq would be concluded rapidly.

"The president believes that the war is making progress, the war is on track," a Bush administration official said Friday, on condition of anonymity.

US planes bomb northeast as Iraqi troops retreat

P U.S. warplanes bombed Iraqi positions on Friday in the northeast of the country, where Kurdish sources say President Saddam Hussein's army has begun retreating from a key oil centre.

Witnesses in Kalar, near the frontier between Kurdish-held northern Iraq and government territory, saw U.S. planes bomb the outskirts of the northeastern city of Khanaqin, about 25 km outside Kalar and 130 km from Baghdad.

"The bulk of the bombing was just north of Khanaqin, at the main point of defence for the city," said Mullah Bakhtiyar, a military commander for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two Kurdish factions running northern Iraq.

"One division has been pulled away from the city, and heavy artillery was removed yesterday from the forward positions," he said, referring to bunkers on a chain of hilltops outside Kalar on the road to government territory.

Baath Party office hit in Baghdad

A Baghdad office of Iraq's ruling Baath Party was hit by an air strike on Friday, killing eight people including several civilians, witnesses said.

Reuters correspondent Nadim Ladki quoted residents as saying the blast in Baghdad's Mansour district occurred at around noon, demolishing the party's neighbourhood office and several nearby houses.

"It basically turned the block into rubble," Ladki said. Local residents said they had pulled eight bodies from the wreckage, including Baath Party militia members and several civilians.

Tit-for-tat hacker attacks Pro-and-anti Iraq war protesters have been making their point by hacking into Websites in a display of "cyber activism", rather than with the traditional can of spray paint or placard.

Countless activists - protesters or war hawks - have the ability to hijack or cripple Web sites from the opposing camp, leaving in their wake a graveyard of busted and defaced links.

"This is the future of protest," said Roberto Preatoni, founder of Zone-H, an Estonian firm that monitors and records hacking attacks. Since the war in Iraq started last week, the firm has recorded over 20,000 Web site defacements.

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