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Blast heard outside Iraq invasion force HQ in Qatar AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar, March 23 (Reuters) - An explosion was heard on Sunday outside the Qatar headquarters of U.S.-led forces invading Iraq, apparently from a nearby industrial site, witnesses said. "We're investigating it. We just have initial reports of a sound," U.S. Marines Captain Stewart Upton, a spokesman at the U.S./UK Central Command headquarters, told Reuters. Witnesses said the explosion apparently came from warehouses outside the sprawling camp in desert land outside the capital Doha. A pall of smoke hung briefly in the air. A French journalist who was on...

Forces trying to negotiate surrender of Basra - UK AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar, March 22 (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces are attempting to negotiate the surrender of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a British military spokesman said on Saturday. "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. "I understand that there is some sort of contact but I am unable to divulge that at this time." Earlier a U.S. Marine captain said tanks were...

U.S. says Nassiriya in southern Iraq captured AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar, March 22 (Reuters) - U.S.-led forces have captured the southern Iraqi town of Nassiriya, U.S. military spokesman Stuart Upton told Reuters on Saturday. "Nassiriya has fallen," he said from the U.S. Central Comand headquarters in Qatar. He declined to give further details. The town is a key crossing point on the Euphrates river about 320 km (200 miles) southeast of the capital, Baghdad.