"Over the last 24 hours what you have are continuing airstrikes against Iraqi military targets in the area of Tikrit as well as against regime leadership targets," Navy Captain Frank Thorp said at US Central Command's forward planning base here.

Thorp said US forces "continue to move north" from the Iraqi capital and described Tikrit, 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Baghdad, as "first and foremost the next large metropolis in the country as well as recognized to be a very important city for the regime."

A senior US commander in the war on Iraq, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, on Tuesday said US forces were keeping up the pressure on Tikrit to prevent Iraqi units loyal to Saddam Hussein from reaching the president's hometown.

"We know that there are any number of command and control related facilites in Tikrit," he told reporters here.

"Tikrit has not escaped our interest, nor has it escaped our targeting."

He said the aim was to apply "pressure on the Iraqi forces in that area while preventing their movement to Tikrit or Baghdad."

The Financial Times newspaper, citing US military sources in Qatar, reported that US commanders were preparing an assault on positions in Tikrit later this week, hoping to deliver a punishing psychological blow to the Iraqi leadership.

It said the US Army's heavy Fourth Infantry Division was being deployed to central Iraq from Kuwait to carry out the operation.

SPACE.WIRE