March 20:

-- The United States launches war on Iraq with limited air strikes on Baghdad, after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein rejects a US deadline to leave the country

March 21:

-- The United States fires 1,000 cruise missiles on hundreds of targets in Baghdad and elsewhere

March 22:

-- US troops meet stiff resistance around the key southern port of Umm Qasr and in Nasiriyah, a key crossing over the Euphrates River

March 23:

-- Iraqi television shows pictures of dead US soldiers and five captured US troops

-- US air raids pound Baghdad, the northern city of Mosul and positions held by Kurdish Islamist group allegedly linked to al-Qaeda

March 24:

-- Iraq's northern oil capital of Kirkuk is rocked by 24 hours of bombardment

March 25:

-- British and US forces take control of the port city of Umm Qasr, as a fierce sandstorm slows down another flank

March 26:

-- Iraq says 14 Iraqis are killed when missiles hit a Baghdad residential and market area

-- US-led forces bombard the state television building in Baghdad

March 27:

-- 1,000 US paratroopers parachute into the Kurdish-held north

-- US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair hold a summit in Washington, predicting victory while warning the conflict could drag on

March 28:

-- At least 30 people are killed in an air strike on a busy Baghdad market, Iraq says

March 29:

-- US and British forces destroy a building hosting a meeting of some 200 members of Iraq's ruling Baath party in the Basra region, US officials say

March 31:

-- US forces report their first serious battle with Iraq's elite Republican Guard, south of Baghdad

-- Hundreds of British Royal Marines launch a major assault to secure a suburb southeast of the southern city of Basra

April 1:

-- US forces shoot dead seven women and children at a military checkpoint

-- Coalition warplanes pound Iraqi army positions at Kirkuk

April 2:

-- US forces attack four elite Republican Guard divisions at Karbala in central Iraq

-- US wins an accord from Turkey to use its territory to resupply troops

April 3:

-- US troops reach Baghdad airport, 20 kilometres (13 miles) from the city centre

-- Coalition forces say they hold more than 9,000 Iraqi prisoners of war

April 4:

-- US forces capture large parts of Baghdad airport

-- Kurdish fighters cross a bridge near the strategic northern junction of Khazer after more than 24 hours of fierce fighting

-- Expatriate UN humanitarian workers return to Iraq

April 6:

-- 18 Kurds are killed and 45 wounded near Arbil in northern Iraq when US aircraft mistakenly bomb a Kurdish-US convoy

April 7:

-- US forces move into Baghdad and seize several presidential palaces.

-- At least nine civilians are killed when a missile crashes into a residential neighbourhood in Baghdad, witnesses say

-- Britain says it believes "Chemical Ali", a feared cousin of Saddam who was blamed for a gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds in 1988, is killed in a US-British raid

April 8:

-- Bush pledges after a two-day Belfast summit with Blair that the UN will play a vital role in post-war Iraq

April 9:

-- US marines pull down a huge statue of Saddam in central Baghdad, as scenes of jubilation spread throughout the capital

-- US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the "tide is turning" against the Iraqi government and that the "regime has been dealt a serious blow"

-- The Iraqi ambassador to the UN says "the game is over"

April 10

-- US-backed Kurdish forces take possession of the centre of northern Iraq's key oil city of Kirkuk without a fight

-- Iraqis begin widespread looting of ministries, shops and museums across Baghdad

April 11

-- US and Kurdish fighters claim control of Iraq's third city of Mosul and move to secure Kirkuk, shoring up their foothold in the north

-- The United States issues a list of 55 people it wants to question

April 12

-- Hundreds of Iraqi volunteers, including police, turn up in Baghdad in response to an appeal by US forces to help restore order following looting

-- Saddam's top weapons advisor surrenders and insists the ousted regime did not have weapons of mass destruction

April 13

-- US troops enter Saddam's ancestral home town of Tikrit

-- President Bush accuses Syria of having chemical weapons and warns it must cooperate with US forces to eradicate last remnants of Saddam's regime

-- Seven US prisoners of war, the last remaining POWs in Iraqi hands, are found in good shape by US troops

-- Several dozen Baghdadis stage the first anti-US protest since US forces swept into the capital

April 14

-- US forces take control of Tikrit with barely a fight, effectively ending the military campaign

-- All Iraqi oil wells are under control of US and British forces, according to the US Central Command

-- Iraqi police escorted by US soldiers begin first joint patrols in Baghdad

April 15

-- Fifteen people are killed in the northern city of Mosul, as witnesses allege US troops opened fire. US forces later admit to shooting dead seven people.

-- Thousands protest at US-brokered talks near Nasiriyah aimed at sketching out a post-Saddam administration

-- The United States threatens Syria with diplomatic and economic sanctions amid reports Damascus has given refuge to fleeing Iraqi officials

-- US officials announce the capture in Baghdad of Abu Abbas, the Palestinian mastermind of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking

April 16

-- A 12-year-old Iraqi boy who lost both his arms and was orphaned in a US missile attack on his home in Baghdad receives emergency treatment in Kuwait

-- US President George W. Bush calls on the United Nations to lift crippling economic sanctions on Iraq with Saddam's regime "passed into history"

-- The commander of US forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, pays his first visit to Baghdad

-- At least four people were killed in a shooting in Mosul

-- US officials say Secretary of State Colin Powell may travel to Syria for talks on defusing new tensions between the two countries

April 17

-- The European Union calls for the United Nations to play a central role in rebuilding Iraq

-- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says the United Nations must be given adequate resources to fulfill any role in rebuilding the country

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