An Iraqi man waves his AK-47 rifle in front of a downed U.S. Apache helicopter

CAIRO, March 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - As the U.S.-led invasion forces intensified their aggressive strikes against Iraq Monday, March 24, the Iraqi people put up stiffer-than-expected resistance amid high morale after downing a U.S. Apache helicopter as part of other setbacks for the invasion forces during the day.

Herewith a chronology of events on the fifth day of the war:

- A defiant President Saddam Hussein promised Iraq that victory over British and U.S. forces was at hand and urged Iraqis to slit their enemies' throats despite a fearsome battering in new air raids, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

- U.S. forces launched a fresh assault on the key southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah as stiff resistance and a sandstorm slowed their drive through the desert to Baghdad.

- Five Iraqi civilians were killed, including a woman, Monday, March 24, when U.S.-led aircraft hit houses in a densely populated area of Baghdad, residents said.

- Cracks continued to deepen in the aura of invincibility enjoyed by the U.S. military in the first days of the war, with Pentagon officials confirming that at least one of the vaunted Apache attack helicopters had been downed.

- On the streets of Baghdad, the pictures of dead and captured U.S. soldiers and the reports of fierce resistance to the U.S.-led attack left Iraqis standing tall and proud.

- U.S.-led forces carried out massive air strikes around the key northern oil capital of Kirkuk as pro-U.S. Kurdish forces signaled that a new front against Saddam Hussein could soon be opened.

- U.S.-led forces have taken about 3,000 Iraqi prisoners of war in their four-day-old campaign to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, their commander General Tommy Franks said.

- British press reacted with shock at the shooting down of a Tornado fighter by an American Patriot missile shortly after two tragic air accidents claimed 14 British lives.

- Under attacks by mortars and guerrillas disguised in civilian clothes, Britain's Seventh Armored Brigade, the Desert Rats, was forced to withdraw from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Iraq's second largest.

- Kuwaiti firefighters in southern Iraq put out their first oil well fire and officials said it would take three or four days to bring the situation under control, the official KUNA news agency reported.

- The representative in France of the Qatari television news channel Al-Jazeera defended the decision to broadcast Iraqi pictures of U.S. prisoners-of-war, saying the criticism smacked of double standards.

- Britain was lobbying the United States to try to win a share of the work to rebuild post-war Iraq for British companies, amid concern that U.S. firms will land all of the lucrative contracts.

- Turkey would send troops into northern Iraq to stem the refugee influx and increased "terrorism" that followed the 1991 Gulf war, government spokesman and justice minister Cemel Cicek said.

- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov rejected U.S. accusations that Russian firms had sold military equipment to Iraq, saying an investigation into the claims had not found any proof.

- The first airplane carrying U.S. troops wounded in action in Iraq arrived at Ramstein air base in western Germany where they were to be treated, US officials said.

- Famed U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore used his Oscar win to launch a diatribe on wartime U.S. President George W. Bush, saying “We are against this war Mr Bush. Shame on you

- Protests continued in many world countries against the U.S.-led aggression against Iraq, as many governments tightened security outside British and American embassies in fear of attacks.

- Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that the U.S. assault against Iraq was in breach of the UN's charter and urged an immediate cessation of hostilities in Iraq.

- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has approached the Iraqi authorities and the U.S.-led forces asking for permission to visit prisoners of war captured by both sides during the current Iraq invasion, an ICRC spokesman in Amman told reporters.

- Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said that Prisoners of war in Iraqi hands will be treated in accordance with "the teachings of Islam”.

- Players from Spanish football powerhouse FC Barcelona donned anti-war T-shirts and displayed a banner calling for peace minutes before their weekly league game.

- The Russian papers warned that the U.S.-led alleged coalition to invade and occupy Iraq suffered their heaviest losses yet, despite fooling itself into thinking it would win the war quickly and easily.

- Arab foreign ministers condemned the "aggression" against Iraq and called for the "immediate withdrawal" of U.S. and British invasion forces from the country, at the end of a meeting in Egypt's capital.