SAMARRA, Oct 2: The US-led forces, backed by Warplanes, tightened their grip on the guerilla stronghold of Samarra on Saturday, claiming they had killed 125 militants in one of the largest offensives since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The two-day offensive to retake Samarra, some 100kms north of Baghdad, also resulted in the capture of 88 guerillas, a US general said.

Major General John Batiste added that operations in the town would continue for several days.

Sporadic gunfire could be heard in the city centre on Saturday, near a mosque, but otherwise the town was quiet two days after 5,000 US and Iraqi troops launched the operation, the first in a campaign to retake all guerrilla bastions.

More than 80 bodies were brought in to Samarra's hospital on Friday, and five more on Saturday. Others were left in the streets, with health workers too busy to collect them. The Iraqi Red Crescent said it had evacuated 25 wounded people late on Friday, including a young girl who later died. Some residents fled, fearing for their lives.

"It took me three hours to get to a safe place," said Abu Muhammad, a labourer, standing on Samarra's outskirts on Saturday as a thick plume of dark smoke rose up behind him.

"Not all of us are the resistance. You can see the resistance. Go see the bodies in the streets of Samarra.

"Snipers are positioned over houses. They shoot at us when we try to go out," he said, not specifying whether he meant American or resistance fighters.

The U.S. military said in a statement that Iraqi National Guards had secured Samarra's hospital and a team of 70 Iraqi volunteers had arrived from Tikrit, 75kms to the north, to help deal with the wounded.

Iraq's interior minister, a former senior official in the Samarra regional government, visited the city on Saturday to look at what the offensive had achieved and gauge local opinion.

FOUND DEAD: Eight Iraqi customs officers have been found dead and the valuable cargo of antiquities they were transporting from southern Iraq is missing, police said Saturday.

"Seven customs officers and their commander, reported missing on September 27, have been found dead in the region of Latifiyah," a Sunni Arab insurgent bastion immediately south of Baghdad, the chief of police in the nearby Shiite majority provincial capital of Hilla, told AFP.

The missing objects are believed to be those recovered on Tuesday by Italian police and Iraqi customs officers after they dismantled a criminal ring trafficking archaeological treasures dating from the Sumerian period some 50 centuries ago.

The police recovered around 70 fragments of stone tablets bearing traces of cuneiform script - one of the world's oldest - 12 finely carved vases and a substantial number of coins, bracelets and other pieces of jewellery.

AMBUSH: Seven Iraqi Christians, their Muslim driver and his son were killed in an ambush on their minibus in the south of Baghdad earlier in the week, police said on Saturday.

"These Iraqis, employed by the Hunting Club in the upper class district of Mansur, left work on Thursday evening to return to their homes in the Dura area," a police official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"Upon arrival at the entrance of Dura, the vehicle was shot at by unknown attackers," he said. -Agencies