SIEGE OF BASRA: British troops were entrenched outside Basra last night, still unable to secure Iraq's southern city despite aerial bombing and heavy artillery fire directed at forces loyal to Saddam Hussein.
Soldiers from 7 Armoured Brigade - the Desert Rats - face the prospect of having to wait for Iraqi troops to come out and fight or surrender. Alternatively, they could take the high-risk option of launching hit-and-run raids on key paramilitary targets in the city.
For the moment, according to the British army spokesman Col Chris Vernon, the Desert Rats were mounting "aggressive patrols ... as soon as we see targets we are taking them on".
Iraqi civilians were reported to be coming out of Basra to inform coalition forces about the whereabouts of President Saddam's supporters and assist in directing air and artillery strikes against their city.
"We are receiving a lot of information from inside the city," one British officer said. "Most of it is coming from Iraqi people who are fed up with the regime and who are sneaking out across the bridges to tell us what is going on in the city. It is very risky, but the fact so many people are prepared to do this indicates the level of opposition there is to Saddam within Basra."
Several leading Ba'ath party officials in Basra are believed to have been assassinated in recent days. British officials declined to say who had carried out the killings, or who the victims were.
Gunfire late on Tuesday had been sparked off by internecine fighting between members of the city's ruling elite, they said.
"There was fighting between members of the Ba'ath party following a decision by 'Chemical Ali' [General Ali Hassan al-Majid] to execute a tribal leader," the sources said.
British military officials in central command in Qatar painted a confusing picture, saying yesterday that a group of civilians in one part of the city had attacked Iraqi government officials with pistols and assault rifles. Iraqi forces had tried to stop the attack by firing mortars at the crowd. "They were mortaring their own people," a British military source said.
British artillery units on the outskirts of the city then targeted the mortar positions and coalition aircraft dropped satellite-guided bombs on the city's Ba'ath headquarters.
The streets of Basra appeared to be largely calm yesterday.Apart from regular Iraqi army troops, there were estimated to be 1,000 irregular Fedayeen or special security forces inside the city, which has a largely Shia population.
(Guardian Service)
• US-led coalition forces last night attacked a large column of Iraqi tanks that exited Basra and poured south of the city. Dozens of air strike sorties were called in to attack the column, which showed no signs of attempting to surrender. It was estimated that it contained up to 120 T55 tanks and armoured personnel carriers.