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Looking For Trouble |
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March 25 |
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(Published March 26) THE operation to decapitate Saddam Hussein's apparatus of terror in the south of Iraq began just after dawn. A Warrior tank turned into a side road in the town of Az Zubayr close to Basra, and smashed straight through the outside wall of a two-storey house. Accelerating as it went, the tank plunged through the ten-foot high perimeter wall and just kept on going. Bricks and masonry showered down on to its metal hatch. The moment of impact was the first inkling that any of those sleeping inside had that anything was wrong; by then it was too late. British troops swarmed through what was left of the blue-bricked building, determined that their quarry would not escape. They had good reason not to want to let him get away. The man they were after, a leading Baath Party official, was suspected of involvement in Sunday's attack on a Land Rover carrying two Royal Engineers in Az Zubayr. Neither of the engineers has been seen since. After a brief but ferocious battle, the Baath Party man had been snatched and at least seven of his henchmen were dead. The coalition force suffered one minor casualty from shrapnel wounds. The attack on the house at Az Zubayr was the first strike in a new phase of the British military campaign in southern Iraq. The 7th Armoured Brigade has abandoned attempts to simply secure the outside of Basra and is now deliberately targeting Saddam Hussein's political leadership in the city and the surrounding region. "We are now targeting leadership objectives in Basra," said a British military source. "This is unconventional fighting and we are very good at it." Similar targeted attacks were launched in Basra yesterday with a massive 1,000lb JDAM bomb dropped on the city's Baath Party headquarters. Last night the "decapitation" strikes appeared to have stirred the first signs of rebellion among the oppressed Shiite population in Iraq's second city, with reports of rioting and fierce internecine fighting on the streets. In Az Zubayr, the dawn attack on the Baath Party leader saw one of the most violent clashes experienced by British soldiers in the conflict so far. As soon as the building was rammed, a fire fight broke out. Militia men in neighbouring houses, who were supposed to be on guard, belatedly woke up to the danger. Bullets and rocket-propelled grenades flew through the air as they opened fire, but the men of D Company of the Black Watch had come in strength. With rounds ricocheting off the ground in front of them, they poured out of their armoured vehicles, hitting the ground running and letting fly with everything in their armoury. Rifles, grenades, the Warriors' 30mm main guns, chain guns and even an anti -tank missile were turned on the defenders. Within minutes, at least seven Iraqis were dead and many more lay injured. Lance Corporal Colin Edwards, heart pounding, gave the Iraqi defenders everything he had. A few moments earlier, the 19-year-old from Dundee, had been sitting nervously in the back of his Warrior, listening to the commanding officer running through the final instructions for the attack over the clatter of their own machine gun as it blasted away. When the doors swung open, he leapt out and opened up in the direction of the muzzle flashes of the Iraqi guns. "As soon as we jumped out the chain gun was going," he said. "There were small arms rounds bouncing off the ground right in front of us but we were firing away at them too, trying to keep their heads down. "Everything was going in, grenades, Warriors laying down 30 millimetre fire, anti-tank weapons, everything." Inside the lead Warrior tank, Major Douggie Hay, the man masterminding the operation, was enjoying the moment. He had been planning the raid all day, since his commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Mark Riddell-Webster had warned him on Monday morning that he and his men may have to undertake a slightly tricky operation. "We knew where the house was and that the Baath party official was probably there, but it wasn't until 9pm that the CO said we were on for it. Then we went up to plan the final bit of the raid which was the snatch itself." With 120 men and a troop of tanks, he was confident they had the resources to carry out a successful operation, but they ran through it a couple of times before heading off just after 5: 15am yesterday morning. "We planned it so we went in just as the light was up, giving us enough light to see where we were going but also to achieve some surprise. As we drove through the town, there was no-one around at all." Driving down narrow streets, they spotted their target just before 5:40am, a square house about 20ft high, flat-roofed and surrounded by a high defensive perimeter wall. Major Hay said: "We sped straight at the target house with three Warriors next to me, ramming the protective brick wall into the house and the assault started. "The driver said it was surreal sitting in the driver's seat watching the wall fall down on him. Everyone was still in bed or just getting up, it was really quiet. "But after a couple of minutes they started opening up on us firing at us from two or three positions outside the house. The place came alive almost instantaneously. "One of our lads got a shrapnel wound from the initial burst of fire, but nothing of great consequence. It went right between him and the bloke next to him as they tried to batter down a door." The target house, they discovered, was defended not just by the perimeter wall but by militia men positioned in the nearby buildings. But with the guards occupied by the tanks and Warrior teams, those inside the house had time to carry out a thorough search. Grabbing the man they were after, they bundled him into the back of the Warrior, now half-buried beneath the shattered brick work of the living-room wall. With the engine screaming, the driver slammed it into reverse and they were off, leaving as quickly as they had arrived. Colonel Chris Vernon said: "He was sitting there in his little building thinking great, have a good evening, have a good morning, then whack we're in, whack he's out and 20 of them are gone, just like that." A job well done, the CO said later. The message was repeated by Air Marshall Brian Burridge, the senior British military officer in the Gulf. He said: "We've always known we've had to get at them, and we did that last night in Az Zubayr. We went to their headquarters and engaged in contact with them ... and made it quite clear to them - we, the British forces, are up for this, and you are going to have a very hard time." It was a clear message to the remnants of Saddam Hussein's political network in southern Iraq that the British force now means business. News of the attack on Az Zubayr travelled quickly around the region. After Saddam's defeat in the 1991 Gulf war, the one million Shiites who make up the vast majority of Basra's population, rose up against his regime and slaughtered hundreds of Baath Party officials and sympathisers in the city. The Iraqi dictator struck back as he regained control of his shattered nation and it is estimated tens of thousands of people suspected of joining the rebellion have since been executed. It is the brutality of Saddam's reprisals, and uncertainty over the success of the coalition in removing him from power, that has discouraged a similar popular uprising in Basra until now. Signs that the Iraqi forces in the city are running out of options were seen yesterday lunchtime when a column of Iraqi T-55 tanks with the 51st Division suddenly broke out of the city heading south, apparently intending to attack the positions of 3 Commando Brigade on the Al Faw peninsula. They never reached their objective as massive AS-90 Howitzers and Challenger 2 tanks operated by the Queen's Dragoons' Guards were joined by helicopter gunships from HMS Ark Royal to pick off the advancing armour. The first wave of 11 vehicles, including tanks and artillery pieces, were all destroyed and the British force then faced a counter attack from up to 50 Iraqi tanks storming out of Basra. RAF Harrier jets and A-10 tank-busters were called in to deliver laser-guided bombs and armour-piercing depleted uranium bullets into the Iraqi tanks. Some of the T-55 tanks were destroyed after they retreated to houses in the nearby village of Abul Khasib. A total of 20 of the Iraqi tanks were taken out of action in the entire battle and scores of Iraqi regular soldiers are believed to have been killed. The original coalition battle plan was for British forces to surround the city but not attack it, in the hope that the civilian population would welcome the liberation from Saddam Hussein's chain of command. But hundreds of Iraqi irregular militiamen have been posted in the city, drawn from political activists in the Baath Party and the Saddam Fedayeen, to suppress a popular uprising by the city's Shiite majority. British troops described how Iraqis were using terrified civilians as human shields as fighting raged around Basra. Desert Rats were powerless to hit back as guerrillas in civilian clothes fired over the shoulders of their captives. Col Vernon said yesterday at the British Army HQ: "We have received disturbing reports that civilians are being used as human shields. Enemy gunmen in civilian clothes are firing from behind them at 7th Armoured Brigade forces, then retreating." As part of the battle to loosen the grip of the guerrilla elements in Basra, coalition forces dropped satellite-guided 1,000lb J-Dam bombs on the city. They are the first bomb strikes on the residential centre of Basra. The bombs, dropped by American F-18 Super Hornet war planes, were aimed at targets which were described by British Army officers as military sites hidden inside civilian buildings. One was a large ammunition dump, containing weapons, bullets, shells and other munitions, and the second was a building reportedly used as an operational base by Iraqi fighters in the city. Heavy fighting also continued on the outskirts of the city with British forces firing across the Shatt al-Basra waterway at Iraqi armour on the other side. A "ring of steel" thrown around the city in the opening stages of the conflict has had holes punched through it by the incessant Iraqi ambushes. A tank unit with the 7th Armoured Brigade withdrew from a northern route out of the city on Monday leaving the Basra to Amara road in the hands of Iraqi forces, which allows reinforcements to enter from Baghdad. US Predator surveillance drones are patrolling the road, looking for Iraqi surface-to-surface missile launchers that are still firing Al Abadil-100 and al-Samoud missiles at Kuwait. "We are driving them northwards and the missiles are now starting to drop in the desert north of Kuwait, indicating we are pushing them back to limit of their range," a military spokesman said. Securing Basra will be vital for the humanitarian effort to bring in water and food to the people of the city. The International Red Cross has started repairs at the damaged Wafaa Al-Quaid water pumping station to the north of the city, which provides 60 per cent of the city of Basra's water supplies. The British say the water plant was shut down by Saddam's supporters and then blamed on coalition military strikes as a propaganda exercise. A senior British military source said that the battle for Basra had entered a new phase with the aim of separating Saddam's fearsome political apparatus from the regular military and from the civilian population. "We are now going after the leaders and cutting them down," the source said. "We are moving a wedge between the Baath Party and the people," said Colonel Chris Vernon. "We are trying to gain the confidence of the people so that they can assert themselves as we believe, looking back to the Gulf war, is probably their desire." Once Saddam's political machinery is decapitated in the south of Iraq, the British forces believe it is only a matter of time before they are welcomed into Basra as liberators of a city that has suffered more than any other under Saddam Hussein's rule. Additional reporting by Paul Gallagher and Tim Ripley at US Central Command, Qatar.
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(Original copy) It was just after dawn yesterday morning when the Warrior crashed through the wall of the house tucked away down a side road in the Iraqi town of Az Zubayr. The first inkling those sleeping inside had that anything was wrong was when it hit the ten-foot high perimeter wall, accelerating all the time. Bricks flying everywhere, it plunged on straight into the side of the house, the driver wincing as debris showered own on the metal hatch above his head. By the time those inside the house realised what was hap-pening, it was too late. British troops were swarming through what was left of the two-storey blue-bricked building, determined that their quarry would not escape. And they had good reason not to want to let him get away. The man they were after, a leading Ba'ath party official, was suspected of involvement in an attack on a Land Rover carrying two Royal Engineers a couple of days earlier. Neither man has been seen since. Outside, a fierce fire fight had broken out, as those militia men in neighbouring houses who were supposed to be on guard awoke to the danger. Bullets and rocket propelled grenades flew through the air as they opened fire, but the men of D Company of the Black Watch had come in strength. With rounds riochetting off the ground in front of them, they poured out of their armoured vehicles, hitting the ground running and letting fly with everything in their armoury. Rifles, grenades the Warriors' 30 millimetre main guns, chain guns and even an anti-tank missile were turned on the defenders.Within minutes, at least seven Iraqis were dead and many more lay injured. Lance Corporal Colin Edwards, heart pounding, was giving the Iraqi defenders everything he had got.A few moments earlier, the 19-year-old from Dundee, had been sitting nervously in the back of his Warrior, listening to the Commander running through the final instructions for the attack over the clatter of their own machine gun as it blasted away. When the doors swung open, he leapt out and opened up in the direction of the muzzle flashes of the Iraqi guns. "As soon as we jumped out the chain gun was going," he said. "There was small arms rounds bouncing off the ground right in front of us but we were firing away at them too, trying to keep their heads down. "Everything was going in, grenades, Warriors laying down 30 millimetre fire, anti-tank weapons, everything. " Inside the lead Warrior, Major Douggie Hay, the man master-minding the operation, was enjoying the moment. He had been planning the raid all day, since his Commanding Officer Lt-Col Mike Riddell-Webster had warned him that morning that he and his men may have to undertake a slightly tricky operation. "We knew where the house was and that the Ba'ath party official was probably there, but it wasn't until 9pm that the CO said we were on for it. "Then we went up to plan the final bit of the raid which was the snatch itself." With 120 men and a troop of tanks, he was confident they had the resources to carry out a successful operation, but they ran through it a couple of times before heading off just after 5.15am yesterday morning. "We planned it so we went in just as the light was up, giving us enough light to see where we were going but also to achieve some surprise. "As we drove through the town, there was no-one around at all." Driving down narrow streets, they spotted their target just before 5.40am, a square house about 20 feet high, flat roofed and surrounded by a high defensive perimeter wall. "We sped straight at the target house with three Warriors next to me, ramming the protective brick wall into the house and the assault started. "The driver said it was surreal sitting in the driver's seat watching the wall fall down on him. "Everyone was still in bed or just getting up, it was really quiet." But after a couple of minutes they started opening up on us firing at us from two or three positions outside the house. The place came alive almost instan-taneously. "One of our lads got a shrapnel wound from the initial burst of fire, but nothing of great consequence. "It went right between him and the bloke next to him as they tried to batter down a door." The target house, they discovered, was defended not just by the perimeter wall but by militia men positioned in the nearby buildings. But with the guards occupied by the tanks and Warrior teams, those inside the house had time to carry out a thorough search. Grabbing the man they were after, they bundled him into the back of the Warrior, now half buried beneath the shattered brick work of the living-room wall. With the engine screaming, the driver slammed it into reverse and they were off, leaving as quickly as they had arrived.A job well done, the CO said later. Now the Iraqis knew they were there and that they meant business.
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(Original copy) When we awoke the mood had changed. Gone was the nervous excitement of the night before that came with the first taste of action. In its place was something less tangible, a sense that nothing was quite as it had been. It was John who told us, John the irrepressible motor transport officer, whose ebullient nature enthused all around him. He didn't really need to say anything, his face told its own story. But he told us all the same. There were casualties, he said, some of the boys were dead. We didn't really know them, the men who had gone, didn't know them like their friends did. Maybe we met them yesterday, said hello or smiled and nodded as they drove past over the bridge at Basra and on towards the enemy they could not see. But the feeling of loss was there, all the same. Two men killed, dying together in the dark, gone in a moment, killed by a shell from one of their own. Two more badly hurt. A blue on blue, they call it, but maybe friendly fire is not such an inappropriate name after all. The commander who ordered the shot to be fired, distraught, inconsolable. And another young man dead, another shot from the darkness, fired by an enemy he would never know. Just as hard to take, yet in a strange way, easier too. John called the others together to tell them the news not long after they rose. We did not intrude, it was their business. Later, they stood round talking and all agreed. No one had really ever promised them that this would be easy.
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(Published March 26) TWO British soldiers were killed in a friendly fire incident yesterday when their tank was hit by another British armoured vehicle. The four-man crew of a Challenger 2 were locked in a battle with Iraqi forces near Basra when they were mistakenly targeted by another Challenger, understood to be from the Black Watch. A single tank round killed two of the four-man crew from the Queen's Royal Lancers, part of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers battle group. The other two were seriously injured and were undergoing treatment at a military hospital last night. A third soldier, Lance-Corporal Barry Stephen, of the 1st Battalion Black Watch, died in a separate incident when his vehicle was hit by a rocket -propelled grenade fired by Iraqis from the roadside. L-Cpl Stephen, 31, a married man from Scone, Perthshire, had been trying to protect the soldiers in the vehicle by returning fire from a machinegun mounted on the roof when the rocket hit. In the friendly-fire incident, the turret of the Challenger is believed to have been blown off in the misdirected attack, which happened in pitch darkness. The soldiers who died were named by the Ministry of Defence as Corporal Stephen John Allbutt, 35, from Stoke-on-Trent, and Trooper David Jeffrey Clarke, 19, from Littleworth, Staffordshire. The incident happened at a time when British forces holding a bridge over the Qanat Shatt Al Basrah, a canal running along the western edge of the city, had been under attack for much of the night. Pockets of Iraqi soldiers and militia had fired numerous rocket-propelled grenades at the British positions, and tanks attached to the Black Watch battle group had been returning fire. Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Riddell-Webster, the commander of the Black Watch battle group, said no blame was being placed on the tank crew, who had been under attack when they opened fire. "It is a tragic accident but tragic accidents in these situations do happen," he said. "I have spoken to the person involved and he is clearly distraught. I think we feel a huge sense of disappointment about this. We have very strict procedures in place and we have trained hard to avoid this sort of thing and it is never done on purpose." He said the accident happened in the early hours of yesterday, at the bridge over the canal which British troops had taken all day to secure. "It was dark and there had been, throughout the night, a series of enemy actions against their position, some of which had been cleared by artillery fire." The crew involved is expected to be withdrawn from action and sent into the reserve units. "Within the battle group, people will rally round them. "I think we have gone beyond blame here. Their position was under pressure at the time and they were under RPG fire." Colonel Chris Vernon, a spokesman for British Army Field HQ, said last night: "Despite careful planning, excellent training, top-class night-vision equipment and sophisticated combat ID measures, these events happen in the fog of war and the heat of battle. Our thoughts are with the families of those killed." Earlier, L-Cpl Stephen became the first member of the regiment to die since the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland in 1971. None of his colleagues was injured in the incident near Az Zubayr in southern Iraq. His death came on a night when British troops recorded a notable success in their fight against pockets of determined resistance in southern Iraq. A house in Az Zubayr, near Basra, identified as housing several Baath Party officials, was destroyed by a Warrior armoured vehicle. It ploughed into the building before troops jumped out and opened fire on those inside. A party official was captured and a number of Iraqi fighters were killed or injured. One British soldier suffered minor shrapnel injuries. Air Marshall Brian Burridge, the senior British officer in the Gulf, said: "We've always known we've had to get at them, and we did that last night in Az Zubayr. We went to their headquarters and made it quite clear to them - 'We, the British forces, are up for this, and you are going to have a very hard time'." Despite the bullishness, about that success, the death of L-Cpl Stephen highlighted the danger to the allied forces from militia members and Iraqi soldiers who have cast aside their uniforms, but not their weapons . Several tanks and armoured personnel carriers have come under fire, and it is believed two missing Royal Engineers were captured after their vehicle was hit in another RPG attack. Lt-Col Riddell-Webster said of the death of L-Cpl Stephen: "Like all the other attacks, it was an RPG ambush from the side of the road which is what we are facing all the time. It only takes one man to creep up and get into a firing position and open fire with a rocket." Sergeant Steven Roberts, 33, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, became the first British combat victim after being shot while trying to calm civilian rioting at Az Zubayr on Sunday. Meanwhile, US Central Command said yesterday that an American F-16 jet opened fire on a US Patriot missile battery inside Iraq after the battery's radar locked on to the plane. No casualties were reported. On Saturday, a US Patriot battery shot down an RAF Tornado GR4 near the Kuwaiti border, killing the two British crew.
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(Original news copy) Two British soldiers were killed yesterday morning and two more badly injured when their lightly armoured vehicle was hit by a shell from one of their own tanks. A third British soldier also died in a separate incident when his vehicle was hit by a rocket propelled grenade fired from the roadside. He had been trying to protect the other soldiers in the vehicle by returning fire from a machinegun mounted on the roof when the rocket hit. None of those inside were injured. And two Royal Engineers are missing, believed captured, after their land rover was hit in another RPG attack.The deaths, which bring to four the number of British troops killed on the ground in Iraq, were greeted with a mixture of regret and resignation by troops and military commanders. They came on a night in which British troops recorded a notable success in their fight against pockets of Iraqi determined resistance. After a house in the town of Az Zubaya, near Basra, was identified as housing several Baath party officials and militia, tanks and armoured infantry charged into the town. One Warrior armoured vehicle ploughed into the building, partially demolishing it, before troops jumped out and opened fire on those inside. One party official was captured in the raid and a number of Iraqi fighters were killed or injured. One British soldier suffered minor shrapnel injuries. The friendly fire incident is still under investigation but it appears that a Challenger tank with the Black Watch battle group mistakenly identified a vehicle from another British regiment during the fighting on the outskirts of Basra. British forces holding a bridge over the Qanat Shatt Al Basrah, a canal running along the western edge of the city, had been under attack for much of the night. Pockets of Iraqi soldiers and militia have fired numerous rocket propelled grenades at the British positions and tanks attached to the Black Watch battle group had been returning fire. Lt Colonel Mike Riddell-Webster, commander of the Black Watch battle group, said no blame was being placed on the tank crew, which had been under attack at the time they opened fire. "It is a tragic accident but tragic accidents in these situations do happen," he said. "I have spoken to the person involved and he is clearly distraught. "I think we feel a huge sense of disappointment about this. We have very strict procedures in place and we have trained hard to avoid this sort of thing and it is never done on purpose." He said the accident happened in the early hours of yesterday morning at the bridge over the canal which British troops had spent all day to secure. "It was dark and there had been through out the night a series of enemy actions against their position, some of which had been cleared by artillery fire. "The tank crew involved is expected to be withdrawn from action and sent back into the reserve units. "Within the battle group people will rally round them. I think we have gone beyond blame here. Their position was under pressure at the time and they were under RPG fire." Although the accident has concerned and upset both troops and military commanders, the death of an other soldier in an RPG attack on Monday night highlights what is even a more potentially an even more dangerous situation for all the British forces in Iraq. Militia members and Iraqi soldiers who have cast aside their uniforms have launched a series of attacks on British troops, with several tanks and armoured personnel carriers coming under fire. But it is the older, more lightly armoured vehicles and the unprotected land rovers and supply vehicles which are most at risk. The soldier who died in Monday's attack is understood to have been in such a vehicle when it came under attack in the town of Az Zubayr. "Like all the other attacks it was an RPG ambush from the side of the road which is what we are facing all the time," said Lt Col Riddell-Webster. "It only takes one man to creep up and get into a firing position and open fire with a rocket. "It is a very difficult situation. Challengers and Warriors have taken a number of hits from RPGs and they have done no damage at all, but it is the lighter vehicles that are more vulnerable and guarding all the vehicles all the time is extremely difficult." Lt Col Riddell-Webster said it demonstrated the dangers now faced by British troops in the region, even those operating behind the front line. "I believe that the regular army is defeated and we are now fighting a campaign against irregulars and militia and clearly they are extremely difficult to target accurately without causing massive civilian damage. He said they were having limited success in the battle to pick off those still holding out, believed to include a number of irregular troops and internal security forces. British commanders hope that if they can continue to strike at those pockets of resistance they will undermine the regime and prompt its collapse. They say that popular opinion in the south of the country appears to be supportive of the British presence that until the Iraqi authorities are subdued many people remain to scared to take action against them. Lt Colonel Riddell-Webster said: "I don't think they will give up but we mean to achieve sufficient success for the locals to rise up against them. "From speaking to locals there is considerable feeling against the militia organisation. "If we can get the small core of them in Az Zubayr believe the resistance will collapse and that is certainly what the locals are saying to us." British troops are employing a variety of tactics to combat the guerilla activity, including mounting vehicle check points and road blocks but commanders admit the situation remains difficult and more dangerous than even Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. Lt Col Riddell-Webster said: "These people are taking much more risks than those in Northern Ireland." Air strikes may be contemplated against targets in Basra and other neighbouring towns if they can be untertaken without too many civilian casualties.Troops in Iraq are still waiting for a decision when they will push into the heart of Basra, but last nights raid on Az Zubayra has given them encouragement after a day of heavy and costly fighting. People living in the town have tipped off British troops about the occupants of the targeted house. "I took the decision that we would go in and destroy the people in that house," said the Lt Colonel. "They did a bloody good action. Using tank cover from the edge of the town they drove in the Warriors and I believe the Company Commander drove right into the house. "From my point of view it is entirely satisfactory." |