US says it killed hundreds of Iraqis near Najaf

11.50am

UPDATE - US troops killed hundreds of Iraqi soldiers near the city of Najaf south of Baghdad without losing a man, the Pentagon said on today, as reports emerged of a possible popular uprising against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the southern city of Basra.

In what appeared to be the biggest ground engagement since the war began last Thursday, a US military official said up to 300 Iraqi forces were believed killed when they attacked the US Seventh Cavalry near the town of Najaf, about 160km south of Baghdad.

"Apparently ground forces tried to hit some of our guys with rocket propelled grenades," the official said.

"They did damage a couple of pieces of our gear but we've had no reports of casualties on our side. But apparently there are some reports that we may have killed quite a few of them," he said.

US TV networks said perhaps as many as 500 Iraqis may have been killed.

Reports of the battle came at the end of a day in which a severe sand storm slowed the US advance towards Baghdad. But there was plenty of action elsewhere in Iraq.

British chief of staff Major General Peter Wall said there were "early indications" that a revolt might be underway in Basra, Iraq's second biggest city.

"We will be very keen to capitalize on it. We have a duty to reinforce that but we've got to make sure we do that in a sensible way and don't do anything hotheaded that we might come to regret," he told reporters at Central Command, battle headquarters for US-led forces, in Qatar.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf denied reports of an uprising, which first came from British television reporters near the city.

On day six of the war launched by President George W. Bush to depose Saddam and take control of his alleged weapons of mass destruction, planes again hammered positions of the elite Republican Guard defending Baghdad.

Reuters correspondent Samia Nakhoul said several large explosions were heard after a day of sustained raids on the outskirts of the capital, which briefly knocked Iraqi state television off the air.

To the south, US armored columns, slowed by blinding sandstorms, closed in for the decisive battle for the capital.

Reuters correspondents with US columns advancing on Baghdad said choking dust storms cut visibility to five metres in some places and brought convoys to a halt at times.

The Shi'ite people of Basra rose up against Saddam's Sunni-dominated government after the 1991 Gulf War, but their revolt was rapidly smashed as US forces stood aside.

US-led forces had been hoping the Shi'ite south would welcome their invasion this time round.

Earlier, Colonel Chris Vernon, a British military spokesman in Kuwait, told a news conference that British forces arrayed around Basra had attacked precise Iraqi targets during the day and had captured a top official of Saddam's Baath party there.

British forces south of Basra blocked an attempted breakout by up to 50 Iraqi tanks seeking to press southward from the edge of the city, a British naval commander said.

Two British soldiers were killed by "friendly fire" near the city on Monday and two others were seriously injured, when their tank was mistakenly attacked by another British tank.

With the humanitarian situation in Basra causing mounting concern, British naval officers said they had finally secured Iraq's only deep-water port of Umm Qasr. A British navy ship was expected to dock by Thursday, bringing the first seaborne aid for thousands of hungry civilians in southern Iraq.

Despite the weather, Major-General Victor Renuart told a briefing that US forces were able to keep up pressure on Republican Guard targets in Saddam's power base in and around Baghdad thanks to all-weather, precision-guided weapons.

The Medina Division of Republican Guards stands between Baghdad and US armored columns that have thrust to the Kerbala area, 95km south of the capital.

Richard Myers, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said the toughest fighting still lay ahead.

US Marines finally punched past Iraqi resistance to cross the Euphrates river at Nassiriya in the south.

As the Marine convoy pushed north, it passed the corpses of at least 30 Iraqis, apparently killed in an air strike that hit buses, trucks and cars some 20km north of Nassiriya.

All the dead were men, some of them wearing the black clothes of Iraqi irregular forces. Other men, many of them wounded, were taken prisoner by US Marines.

A separate military column was heading up the main Basra-Baghdad highway, which crosses the river to the west of Nassiriya.

Saddam urged Iraqi tribesmen to join the battle against US and British forces, without waiting for further orders.

"The enemy has violated your lands and now they are violating your tribes and families," the Iraqi leader said in a statement read on his behalf on state television.

Military spokesmen told reporters at Central Command in Qatar that US paratroopers had seized a desert landing strip overnight and that six Iraqi jamming systems aimed at disrupting US satellite positioning equipment had been destroyed.

The United States said Marines seized more than 200 weapons, stockpiles of ammunition and over 3000 chemical suits with masks at an Iraqi hospital which was being used as a "military staging area."

Central Command in Qatar said in a statement that Marines operating in the southern city of Nassiriya captured about 170 Iraqi soldiers at the hospital. They were not armed.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq