City desperate for a drink

By JUSTIN HUGGLER in Amman

A humanitarian disaster is looming in the city of Basra, says the international Red Cross.

More than a million civilians inside the city have been without clean water or electricity since the weekend, as the fighting rages outside.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, yesterday made an urgent appeal for water supplies to be rushed to the city.

Outside Basra, British troops were in retreat after fierce resistance from within the city where the United States and Britain had predicted their forces would be welcomed as liberators.

Desperate civilians were collecting drinking water from the river, the UN Children's Fund warned.

Raw sewage is dumped in the river, and there are fears of an outbreak of disease.

The Wafa al-Qaed water treatment plant, which normally supplies most of Basra, has been out of action since Saturday when the cables supplying power to the plant were destroyed.

Other water plants have been able to supply around 40 per cent of the city of two million people with water, though the quality is poor.

The rest of the city is completely without water, the Red Cross said.

"We have not been able to gain access to the main water station today, so we will try and do the same thing tomorrow," said Florian Westphal of the ICRC.

"Sixty per cent of the local population are still without access to a regular water supply. This could develop into a humanitarian crisis."

At the UN headquarters in New York, Mr Annan said urgent measures should be taken to restore electricity and water to Basra.

"A city of that size cannot afford to go without electricity or water for long. Apart from the water aspect, you can imagine what it does for sanitation."

It is not clear how the cables supplying power to the Wafa al-Qaed water plant were cut. Basra has come under intense bombardment by British and American forces, but British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon claimed yesterday that the forces had not targeted Basra's water supply.

He speculated that the Iraqi authorities may have sabotaged the water plant.

It is now clear that British forces trying to advance into Basra have met heavy resistance they did not expect.

The Desert Rats retreated from the city yesterday morning, said reporters "embedded" with them, pulling back their Challenger tanks, after being ambushed by Iraqi units using urban guerrilla tactics and coming under heavy mortar fire.

One correspondent reported seeing two charred bodies, "horribly disfigured", still sitting in the burned-out shell of their pick-up truck on the road into Basra.

The road is so dangerous that British troops have named it "RPG alley".

Iraqis in civilian clothing are racing up the road in pick-ups and jeeps and firing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) at British troops as they try to advance.

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Herald Feature: Iraq