British forces cautious about Basra control

1.00pm

AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar - After penetrating deep into the besieged city of Basra, British forces are still cautious about how much of Iraq's second city they actually control, Britain's deputy commander in the Gulf said.

Major General Peter Wall said he was confident they could get into most of the city - as long as it was in a tank. A move into the narrow streets of the old city centre would have to be on foot and Wall would say only that they would start "soon".

Guerrilla fighters remained a threat to the troops, he said.

"General Brims is confident he can go anywhere in a tank. Of course, that's not by any means the level of security we're after," Wall said on Monday.

Major General Robin Brims commands the British land forces, who have besieged Basra for two weeks.

The Royal Marines' 3 Commando Brigade and the tanks of the 7th Armoured Brigade, the "Desert Rats", stormed into Basra on Sunday, meeting only limited Iraqi resistance on several fronts.

Some reached Baghdad Street in the city centre.

But in an interview at war headquarters in Qatar, British chief-of-staff Wall said the narrow streets of the old town posed further problems: "We have to do that part of the operation on foot," he said. "It's going to be under way soon.

Asked how much of Basra was in British hands, he said: "It's a difficult question because in a situation like this all sorts of threats can emerge in the aftermath, particularly at night."

Wall said conventional Iraqi military forces had departed Basra, a city of about 1.5 million. But he cautioned against "excessive optimism" in the face of previous attacks in Iraqi cities by President Saddam Hussein's Baath party loyalists and paramilitary fighters from the Saddam Fedayeen militia.

"A relatively small number of determined people in a large city can still give us difficulty over the days and weeks ahead if they felt that way inclined," Wall said.

Three British soldiers died on Sunday in fighting that mostly pitted them against irregular guerrilla fighters.

Wall said the British method for handling Basra - patient encirclement, propaganda to the civilian population and probing thrusts by armoured units - may or may not be a model for the US forces now consolidating positions around Baghdad.

He said that after nearly three weeks of war, Iraqis' will to resist in Baghdad may be lower that it was when the British arrived outside Basra within a couple of days of first invading.

But with more than three times the population and a vast urban sprawl, Baghdad is a far bigger target. And unlike Basra, where the heavily Shi'ite Muslim population has little love for Saddam, there are more people in the capital, especially from Saddam's Sunni minority, with much to lose if he is overthrown.

"In essence, there are some similarities between the two cities," Wall said. "But there are also some stark differences, and that may well account for the way it gets done."

Meanwhile the prospect that Ali Hassan al-Majid, the cousin of Saddam Hussein widely known as "Chemical Ali", may have been killed by Allied forces was one of several factors which tipped the balance in favour of British forces entering Basra yesterday.

British military sources confirmed yesterday that the corpse of the bodyguard to al-Majid, who is suspected of ordering the gassing of thousands of Kurds in Halabja in 1988 and many other war crimes, was found in the wreckage of a destroyed Basra building.

A military source said that although the body of al-Majid himself had not so far been found, many civilians in the area believed he had been killed in the building, which was attacked after he was seen entering it earlier on Friday.

About 20 Iraqi officials and others are believed to have been killed in the strike.

Military sources said that civilians were less fearful of the regime as a result of the apparent elimination of al-Majid and therefore likely to be more warmly disposed to an incursion of British troops.


- REUTERS, INDEPENDENT


Herald Feature: Iraq war