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View Full Version : U.S. Marines Fight Iraqis in Major Battle for Basra



thedrifter
03-22-03, 06:57 AM
Sat, Mar 22, 2003

By Matthew Green

NEAR BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. Marine tanks fought a "major battle" with Iraqis on the western outskirts of Iraq (news - web sites)'s second city Basra on Saturday, a marine captain said.



British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon later said regular Iraqi forces had left the key southern port, but some of President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s units were keeping up resistance.


"We are attacking Iraqi forces, all of which are west of Basra," Captain Andrew Bergen told reporters in the Basra region. "I would certainly say it's a major battle."


"That's Marine artillery right there shooting," he said, as explosions thudded in the distance.


A British spokesman said U.S.-led forces were closing in on Basra from two sides but trying to negotiate a "peaceful surrender."


"We would rather use negotiation rather than military muscle to achieve any success," Group Captain Al Lockwood, main spokesman at the Qatar command headquarters of U.S. and British forces in the Gulf, told Reuters.


"There is some sort of contact but I am unable to divulge that at this time."


He said Basra "remains one of our primary objectives" and that "high hundreds" of Iraqi troops had surrendered as U.S.-British forces progressed northwards into Iraq.


The city is 340 miles southeast of Baghdad but just 30 miles from the Kuwaiti border. Marines were also facing continued pockets of resistance in the smaller port of Umm Qasr south of Basra on the Kuwaiti border.


SINBAD


Two wars, an anti-Saddam rebellion and 12 years of economic sanctions have made a poor, desperate town out of Basra -- once a hub of trade and tourism and the birthplace of Sinbad the Sailor, the hero immortalized in Arab literature.


The vast majority of its estimated two million population depend for survival on government supplies distributed under an oil-for-food deal with the United Nations (news - web sites).


Cobra attack helicopters which were taking part in the battle could be seen circling overhead.


Bergen said he was not aware of any casualties on the U.S. side but that an armored vehicle used to retrieve damaged tanks had been hit by a rocket-propelled brigade.


He said the U.S. Marines were not attempting to take the city since they were aiming to avoid urban warfare.


The Arabic-language television news channel al-Jazeera, which has a correspondent in Basra, said 50 civilians had been killed in the bombardment of the city, including a Russian and an eight-year-old boy who was decapitated.


The report could not be independently confirmed.





Bergen said three wounded Iraqis had been evacuated.

He was not aware if British forces were involved in the battle, but more than 100 British tanks could be seen advancing north along a road outside Basra. "There is a huge pall of gray smoke over the city, it fills half the horizon," Reuters correspondent Ros Russell, some 20 miles south of Basra, said.

Dozens of cars, pickup trucks and tractors were driving south, fleeing the Basra area. Some people came on foot, carrying mattresses.

They seemed happy, waving and giving a thumbs-up to the troops.

Basra is dominated by Shia Muslims who are largely hostile to the government of Saddam Hussein and who suffered reprisals after staging a failed rebellion after the Gulf War (news - web sites) in 1991.

Five or six civilians approached U.S. marines outside Basra, spitting on images of President Saddam Hussein on banknotes they were holding and making gestures to suggest he should be hanged.

But locals in Safwan, on the border with Kuwait, mobbed a British television reporter during a live report saying "Bush" and blowing raspberries at the mention of the U.S. president's name.

Basra, founded in 636 A.D. and featured in the Arabian Nights tales, is a port and an oil pipeline terminal that was developed as a supply base by the British in World War One.

Its petroleum complex was badly damaged in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Its population also fell greatly from more than 1.5 million in 1977 to less than 900,000 a decade later.

It suffered severe bombing during the Gulf War in 1991.

U.S. and British forces were also meeting Iraqi resistance further north, near Nassiriya on the highway to Baghdad. (Additional reporting by Ros Russell, Michael Georgy and John Chalmers in Qatar)


Sempers,

Roger