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:

-- 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 Umm Qasr

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 30:

-- Coalition air strikes pound the outskirts of Baghdad, seeking to soften up Saddam's elite Republican Guard

March 31:

-- US forces report their first serious battle with Republican Guard south of Baghdad

April 1:

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

April 2:

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

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

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 the northern 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 most-wanted Iraqis

April 12

-- Saddam's chief weapons advisor Lieutenant General Amer al-Saadi turns himself in to US forces and insists the ousted regime did not have weapons of mass destruction

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

April 13

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

-- Iraqi presidential advisor and former interior minister Watban Ibrahim Hasan is arrested

-- 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 Mosul, as witnesses allege US troops opened fire. US forces later admit to shooting dead seven people.

-- 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

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

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

April 17

-- Coalition forces arrest Barzan al-Tikriti, half-brother of Saddam Hussein, in a special operation

-- The commander of US-led forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, enters Baghdad for the first time

-- The top US general congratulates the military on a "tremendous combat victory" in Iraq, becoming the first top US military or administration official to declare victory

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

April 18

-- The US military announces the capture of top Baath Party official, Samir al-Aziz al-Najim

-- Abu Dhabi television broadcasts what it said was footage of crowds cheering Saddam in Baghdad on April 9

-- Thousands of Iraqis stage anti-US protests

April 19

-- Former Iraqi finance minister Hikmat al-Azzawi, who figures 45th on a list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, is arrested by Iraqi police, the US announces

-- Iraq's neighbours call for coalition forces to pull out of the country to allow representative government to be formed

April 20

-- A 50-truck convoy carrying the first major food aid to Iraq arrives Baghdad from Jordan following a perilous four-day trip

-- The US military says it captured Abd al-Khaliq Abd Al-Gafar, Iraq's former minister of higher education and scientific research

-- The opposition Iraqi National Congress says Jamal Mustafa Abdullah, deputy head of the tribal affairs office and a son-in-law of Saddam, has surrendered.

-- A US general announces that Baghdad's international airport will open within a week for humanitarian flights

April 21

-- Retired US general Jay Garner, the US civil administrator faced with the daunting mission of rebuilding Iraq, arrives in Baghdad

-- Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims gather in the holy city of Karbala for a long-suppressed pilgrimage

-- Graves of nearly 1,000 political prisoners discovered near Baghdad

-- Electricity is restored to parts of Baghdad after being cut for more than two weeks

-- Key Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi said Saddam is still in Iraq

-- US military experts hunting for illegal weapons in Iraq have found precursors to a banned toxic agent, the New York Times reports.

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