Posted on 04/03/2003 2:51:34 PM PST by kattracks
British Troops Set Up Camp In Basra
By ANJA NIEDRINGHAUS .c The Associated Press
BASRA, Iraq (AP) - For the first time since war began, British troops established camp Thursday inside the southern city of Basra, where fierce battles have raged between the British, Iraqi fighters and residents who oppose Saddam Hussein's regime.
British soldiers, deployed outside Iraq's second-largest city for more than two weeks, crossed the Shatt al-Basra waterway, a 45-foot-deep man-made canal near the southern city limits. Infantry accompanied by armored personnel carriers, tanks and helicopters rumbled over Bridge 4, the most direct route into the city.
By nightfall, an undisclosed number of troops from the 1st Battalion Irish Guards were a few miles from the heart of the city of 1.3 million, according to British pool reports.
Iraqis soldiers and militiamen, who previously kept British forces at bay with daily barrages of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, fled outlying positions, lighting oil trench fires as they went, said coalition military officials.
British Royal Engineers fought to extinguish the smoky fires along the south, which obscured the city from advancing coalition troops. Iraqi soldiers dug similar ditches outside Baghdad, filled them with oil and set them ablaze before running away.
Major Tom Scott said Thursday that Royal Engineers were ``trying to basically put the trench out and cut the supply of oil into the trench.'' Basra, near the rich southern oilfields, is also strategically important because it is connected by a web of footbridges and canals that empty into the Shatt al-Arab river, which flows to the Persian Gulf.
For hundreds of years, Basra was called the Venice of the East. Sinbad's adventures were launched from its shores. The city has endured Ottoman and British occupation and 20 years of recent war. Heavy bombing from the 1991 Gulf War left large deposits of depleted uranium over the region. Basra and its environs have one of the highest cancer rates in the world, aid agencies report.
A center of Shiite Muslim culture, Basra was at the heart of an uprising against Saddam after the Gulf War, and thousands were slaughtered by Saddam's forces. When it comes to atrocities committed by Saddam against his people, the suffering of southern Shiites is eclipsed only by the northern Kurds.
Members of Saddam's Fedayeen militia and his Baath party have been fighting British troops since last week. Early reports said Shiite residents were also battling Saddam's soldiers inside Basra.
Residents were without water and electricity as the killing raged on. British troops had been stationed around Basra while American-led troops pressed toward Baghdad.
Insisting they were not surrounding the city, British troops did not attempt to occupy it because of intense Iraqi resistance - and because they weren't sure how they would be greeted by Basra residents.
But some advancing British soldiers said Thursday they had been welcomed by people in Basra - who hoped the fleeing Iraqi soldiers signified a regional trend.
The British entry into the city followed a coalition leaflet campaign depicting a British soldier shaking hands with an Iraqi man.
``We are here to liberate the people of Iraq,'' said the letter addressed to Basra residents. ``We need your help to identify the enemy, to rebuild Iraq. English speakers please come forward.''
And, in a veiled acknowledgment of what happened to Basra after American troops withdrew in 1991, leaving Saddam firmly in power, the leaflet promised:
``The time we won't abandon you. Be patient, together we will win.''
04/03/03 17:46 EST
It's funny they use the word "endured" to describe the British occupation.
I'm not sure how the Ottoman's treated the place. But the more I learn about the colonialism of the British, the more I think the people who were colonized were the lucky ones, compared to those who came later and had to try to live under self-rule despots like Saddam (and Mugabe, and others).
The only tactical benefit I can think of is that it obscures the city from photo-reconnaissance by our aircraft. Maybe that's why they're doing this.
The chem/bio attacks by Fearless Leader couldn't have anything to do with high cancer rates. Must be the DU.
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