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Looking For Trouble |
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March 26 |
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(Published March 27) THE light was failing when the shouting started, soldiers running for their vehicles, engines revving, a frantic scramble to move out. The word went from unit to unit - thousands of Iraqi militia had appeared in Basra and Az Zubayr and were pouring out of the city to take on the British troops laying siege at the bridges. Among those supporting the forward units, there was consternation. Orders were given to get into convoy and get out. As they waited for the tanks to arrive to support the withdrawal, lights extinguished to reduce the threat it was clear they were now facing, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) landed between the lead vehicles. It exploded with a deafening crash, but narrowly avoided the waiting troops. Word was coming through that the man in charge of retaking Basra during Iraq's eight-year war with Iran had been put in charge of the Iraqi resistance. The orders of Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti - nicknamed "Chemical Ali" because of his method of slaughtering many thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq - were to gather all the resources he could muster and retake the south. But even as the British ammunition and fuel trucks prepared to pull back on Tuesday night, up ahead the forward units were fighting back. Tanks and Warriors, packed with infantrymen of the Black Watch, moved forward to engage and destroy the threat. Artillery shells rained down on the Iraqi lines, the night sky ablaze with a white glow of phosphorous shells, fires springing up across the city. Shell after shell fell on the Iraqi positions, blowing apart tanks, artillery and mortar lines. Inside the city, there was pandemonium. In the Shia stronghold of the city, the slums to the west near the British positions on the Shatt al-Basra canal, militiamen and security forces were executing anyone they believed was helping the British advance. In nearby Az Zubayr, militia men launched attack after attack on the surrounding British forces, hitting them with mortars, RPGs and rifle fire. But even as they launched their last stand, ordinary citizens were rising up, turning on those who had turned on them. As British artillery pounded the area around the Baath party headquarters, those opposed to Saddam's regime rose up and overwhelmed those inside. The order went out that the forward units were to advance to support the civilian population. The majority wanted the militia out and if the majority was to have its way, it was time for the British to do what no-one did more than a decade earlier in the first Gulf war - to move in and help them rise up. Rioting swept the streets, reports of spontaneous outbreaks of public disorder came in from across the city. In the British forward observation post at the south side of the canal, they were taking heavy incoming artillery fire. Shells were landing all around the devastated transport depot overlooking the city. But accurate though the Iraqi gunners were, their shells were failing to knock out the British position. The support unit now safely out of artillery range, the British hit back again. With the rumble of thunder intermingling with the roar of the British guns and lightning flashing across the sky, they rained down high explosives, bomblets and phosphorous shells on the Iraqi positions which had only moments earlier been firing at them. A mortar line that had been attacking B Company of the Black Watch was blown apart; two dozen pick-up trucks with machine guns mounted on their roofs were spotted and destroyed and dozens of T55 tanks smashed to pieces by the British bombardment. Wherever the Iraq commander's forces showed themselves, they were destroyed. The fighting lasted all night, as torrential rain lashed . By first light, it was as good as over. In the town of Az Zubayr, the militia men were on the run. Piling into mini -buses, they tried to flee, grabbing whatever they could lay their hands on. Pockets stuffed with hundreds of dollars, they headed north. The first one got through, but there was no such luck for the others. Picked off at vehicle checkpoints, they found themselves driving straight into the sights of the British troops. The men who had terrorised the civilian population, and subjected the advancing British troops to a campaign of harassment which had claimed at least two lives, were forced to squat by the roadside, hands on their heads, British guns pointed unswervingly at them. As they waited helplessly to be carted away, the first military aid trucks were already racing past, RAF lorries towing huge water tankers and crates of emergency food supplies destined for Az Zubayr. Truck after truck went past . By mid-morning, the International Red Cross, guarded by British troops, had restored half of Basra's water supplies, even as fighting continued to mop up the pockets of organised resistance outside the city. On the outskirts, support units were moving forward again through the fog that blanketed the countryside, gunfire still rattling around them, loud explosions reverberating across the flat and dusty landscape surrounding the beleaguered city of Basra and its one-and-a-half million population. By lunchtime, the forward British units were still in action, under fire from small arms and RPGs, but pushing forward relentlessly. The first round of aid deliveries arrived at a makeshift distribution point just outside Az Zubayr as dusk fell. Immediately, a mortar round exploded 200 yards away, a flash of orange flame and a dull thump. Guns were firing too, in our direction. The crowd scattered, the hands which a moment before had been pawing at the clothing of the soldiers snatched away. Suddenly, hundreds of people were fleeing across the open land back towards the heart of Az Zubayr. Soldiers were everywhere, cocking their rifles, crouching by the roadside, trying to make out in the falling dusk where their attackers could be hiding. Everyone was running, darting for cover behind Land Rovers and Warriors, desperate to get away from the danger that had shattered what should have been a moment of hope. Guns at their sides, the soldiers looked for the shelter of the whitewashed walls of the low-lying dirty buildings at the sides of the aid distribution centre on the outskirts of the town. Moments before, excited Iraqi civilians had been smiling and laughing, swarming around the aid trucks which had finally made it into the town of 100,000 people, just 20km outside Basra. Queuing chaotically behind lines marked out with white tape, they stood expectantly to receive their first fresh water and food for days. "Thank you, thank you," they chorused, "America, Britain, good, good. Happy, happy." Men were trying to kiss the soldiers, clutching their hands, tugging at their clothing, garbling their thanks, desperate for food, desperate for water. Now the crowd was scattering, disappearing into the gloom, leaving the place where they had been deserted. The aid trucks were getting out as quickly as they came, soldiers were jumping into their vehicles and pulling away. Tearing along the highway, throwing up clouds of dust in their wake, the drivers pressed their accelerators to the floor, determined to do as much as possible to put off the possibility of turning themselves into targets for a rocket-propelled grenade attack. Through checkpoints, past more Warriors, more soldiers with guns, we bounced across the rutted road and through the mud, back towards safety. Through a desolate landscape, puddled with the rain that had fallen all night, past more clumps of prisoners under armed guard, past the dogs chasing and yapping at their tyres and tracks, the mood was so different from the expectation which had gone before. Earlier, as the convoys moved along the dusty roads into the outskirts of the town to help dispense aid, groups of young boys had been playing football, oblivious to the columns of tanks and British troops pouring past them, oblivious to the sounds of shelling and gunfire rolling across the canal from Basra. Everywhere, there were British tanks and armoured vehicles, their ochre paintwork battered and chipped. The land was wreathed in a foggy haze, the sun shining through weakly, a pale white disc in the sky above. Wrecked and abandoned vehicles were everywhere and on the edges of the fields, British troops clutched their rifles, scouring the countryside for signs of trouble. Two armoured ambulances returned to a compound outside Basra, pockmarked with bullet holes from where the Iraqi gunmen had used the red crosses on their sides as targets. Two of the red crosses were pierced, the bullets close to the centre of each cross. Their crews explained that they came under fire as they tried to help British troops whose vehicles had been hit in an RPG attack. One vehicle was hit five times, one bullet piercing the side bin and burying itself in their water and rations, another in the exhaust box embedded in the left-hand arm of the red cross painted on the side. Two more hit just below the hatch where driver Corporal Mel Shepherd, 32, from Amble in Northumberland, had been sitting. The final bullet embedded in the name William Lee, stencilled on the front of the vehicle, the name of Mel's seven-month-old son. He said: "I just heard the cracks but didn't realise what was happening. I didn't know they were hitting us. My head was out of the hatch at the time and they struck just a foot away from my head. "I could see tracer rounds coming at me. We only have personal small arms for ourselves and patient protection. I think that's why they were having a go at us because we couldn't hit back." Vehicle Commander Sergeant Gary Moreland, 33, from Bedlington, Northumberland, said they had gone into Az Zubayr on a rescue mission: "We were going down the main street and a signal flare went up in the air. I remember going past a picture of Saddam Hussein and then there were bursts of gunfire behind me." In the vehicle behind him Corporal Donald McClurg, 32, from Dumfries, heard a shout of "contact right". He said: "I brought my weapon up and looked around to my right to see an RPG going straight past me, then another one went past. I put my head down then and used my periscope and told my driver Sarah to get her head down. We were under RPG fire going through the whole town." His vehicle too had been struck, near the centre of its red cross. Another bullet had hit the name Rosie, the name he intends to give to his new baby when his wife gives birth, which is painted on the side of the vehicle and surrounded with painted flowers. She was due last Thursday, but he has not heard yet. Driver Sarah Wilkinson, 19, from Derbyshire, said the first she knew of what was happening was the warning shot. "I said to Don 'look at that' then an RPG went straight over the top of me. I was petrified; I didn't have a chance to batten down the hatch, I just kept my head down." Back on the edge of Az Zubayr, the army is refusing to give up the aid effort. Even as fresh explosions rolled across from the direction of Basra, they were heading back into the town. Half an hour after their hasty departure they were setting up again, this time with more armoured vehicles for support. The gunmen stayed away, but they are still out there.
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(Original copy) The light was failing when the shouting started, soldiers running for their vehicles, engines revving, a frantic scramble to move out. The word went from unit to unit – thousands of Iraqi militia had appeared in Basra and Az Zubayr and were pouring out of the city to take on the British troops laying siege at the bridges. Among those supporting the forward units, there was consternation. Orders were given to get into convoy and get out. As they waited for the tanks to arrive to support the withdrawal, light extinguished to reduce the threat it was clear they were now facing, a rocket propelled grenade landed between the lead vehicles, exploding with a deafening crash but narrowly avoiding the waiting troops. Word was coming through that the man in charge of retaking Basra during Iraq’s eight year war with Iran had been put in charge of the Iraqi resistance. His orders were to gather all the resources he could muster and retake the south. But even as the British ammunition and fuel trucks prepared to pull back, up ahead the forward units were fighting back. Tanks and Warriors, packed with infantry men of the Black Watch, moved forward to engage and destroy the threat. Artillery shells rained down on the Iraqi positions, the night sky ablaze with a white glow of phosphorous shells, fires springing up across the city. Shell after shell fell on the Iraqi positions, blowing apart tanks, artillery and mortar lines. Inside the city, pandemonium. In the Shia stronghold of the city, the slums to the west, the Asha district near the British positions on the Shatt Al Basrah Canal, militia men and security forces were executing anyone they believed was helping the British advance. In the nearby town of As Zubayr, militia men launched attack after attack on the surrounding British forces, hitting them with mortars, RPGs and rifle fire. But even as they launched their last stand in Az Zubayr, the ordinary citizens were rising up, turning on those who had turned on them. As British artillery pounded the area around the Baath party headquarters, those opposed to Saddam Hussein’s regime rose up and overwhelmed those inside. At British military headquarters the order went out that the forward units were to advance to support the civilian population. The majority wanted the militia out and if the majority was to have its way, it was time for the British to do what no one did more than a decade earlier in the first Gulf War, to move in and help them rise up. Rioting swept the streets, reports of spontaneous outbreaks of public disorder were coming in from across the city. In the British forward observation post at the south side of the canal, they were taking heavy incoming artillery fire. Shells were landing all around the devastated shell of the ruined transport depot overlooking the city. But accurate though the Iraqi gunners were, their shells were failing to knock out the British position. With the support unit now safely out of artillery range, the British hit back again. With the rumble of thunder intermingling with the roar of the British guns and lightning flashing across the sky, they rained down high explosives, bomblets and phospho-rous shells on the Iraqi positions which had only moments earlier been firing at them. A mortar line that had been attacking B Company of the Black Watch was blown apart, two dozen pick up trucks with machine guns mounted on their roofs spotted and destroyed. Dozens of T55 tanks, were smashed to pieces by the British bombardment. Wherever the Iraq commander’s forces showed themselves, they were destroyed. The fighting lasted all night, as torrential rain lashed across the countryside outside the city. By first light it was as good as over. In the town of Az Zubayr the militia men were on the run. Piling into mini buses, they tried to flee from the city grabbing what ever they could lay their hands on. Pockets stuffed with hundreds of dollars of cash, they headed north out of the town. The first one got through, but there was no such luck for the others. Picked off at vehicles check points they found themselves driving straight into the sights of the British troops. The men who had terrorised the civilian population and subjected the advancing British troops to a campaign of harassment which had claimed at least two lives were forced to squat by the roadside, hands on their heads, British guns pointed unswervingly at them. As they waited helplessly to be carted away, the first humanitarian aid trucks were already racing past, RAF lorries towing huge water tankers and crates of emergency food supplies destined for the people of Az Zubayr. Truck after truck went past, hundreds of tonnes of desperately needed supplies pouring into the town. At British headquarters they decided it was safe enough to push on into Az Zubayr to begin the task of distributing humanitarian aid. By mid-morning, the International Red Cross, guarded by British troops, had restored half of Basra’s water supplies, even as fighting continued to mop up the last pockets of organised resistance outside the city. On the outskirts, the support units were moving forward again through the fog which blanketed the country-side, gunfire still rattling around them, loud explosions reverberating across the flat and dusty landscape surrounding Basra. By lunch time, the forward British units were still in action, and the fire from small arms and RPGs, but pushing forward relentlessly.
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(Original copy) The mortar round explodes 200 yards away from us, a flash of orange flame and a dull thump, then another. Guns are firing too, firing in this direction. The crowd scatters, the hands a moment ago pawing at the clothing of the soldiers snatched away, hundreds of people fleeing across the open land back towards the heart of the town of Az-Zubayr. Soldiers are everywhere, cocking their rifles, crouching by the roadside, trying to make out in the falling dusk where the attackers could be hiding. Everyone is running, darting for cover behind Land Rovers and Warriors, desperate to get away from the danger that has shattered what should have been a moment of hope. Guns at their sides, the soldiers look for the shelter of the white-washed walls of the low-lying dirty buildings at the sides of the makeshift aid distribution centre on the outskirts of the town.Moments before, excited Iraqi civilians had been smiling and laughing, swarming around the aid trucks which had finally made it into the town of 100,000 people, just 20 kilometres outside Basra. Queuing chaotically behind lines marked out with white tape, they stood expectantly to receive their first fresh water and food for days. "Thank you thank you," they chorused, "America, Britain, good, good. Happy, happy." Men were trying to kiss the soldiers, clutching their hands, tugging at their clothing, garbling their thanks, desperate for food, desperate for water. Now the crowd is scattering, disappearing into the gloom, the place where they had been, deserted. The aid trucks are getting out as quickly as they came, then soldiers jumping into their vehicles and pulling away. Tearing along the highway, throwing up clouds of dust in their wake, the drivers pressing their accelerators to the floor, determined to do as much as possible to put off the possibility of turning themselves into targets for a rocket-propelled grenade attack. Through checkpoints, past more Warriors, more soldiers with guns, the road rutted, bouncing across the tarmac and through the mud, back towards safety. Through a desolate landscape, puddled with the rain that fell all night, past more clumps of prisoners under armed guard, past the dogs chasing and yapping at their tyres and tracks, the mood so different from the expectation which had gone before. Earlier, driving along the dusty roads into the outskirts of the town, groups of young boys had been playing football, oblivious to the columns of tanks and British troops pouring past them, oblivious to the sounds of shelling and gunfire rolling across the canal from Basra. Everywhere there were British tanks and armoured vehicles, their ochre paintwork battered and chipped from battle.The land was wreathed in a foggy haze, the sun shining weakly through, a pale white disc in the sky above. Low ramshackle houses dotted the plain, standing alongside sudden splashes of greenery where Iraqi women tended their crops. Wrecked and abandoned vehicles were everywhere and on the edges of the fields, British troops clutched their rifles, scouring the countryside for signs of trouble. In a compound outside Basra, the British troops were drawing breath. Across in the city tanks were fir-ing, round after round hitting the Iraqi fighters wherever they found them. After days of uncertainty, under the constant threat of attack whenever they ventured forward, they were poised for the final push. At last it seemed to be a question of when, not if. The humanitarian relief was lined up ready and waiting to move in but even in that moment of calm, there were signs of the dangers ahead. Two armoured ambulances pockmarked with bullet holes, the Iraqi gunmen using the red crosses on their sides as targets. Two of the red crosses were pierced, the bullets close to the centre of each cross. Their crews explain that they came under fire as they tried to help British troops whose vehicles had been hit in an RPG attack. One vehicle was hit five times, one bullet piercing the side bin and burying itself in their water and rations, another in the exhaust box embedded in the left-hand arm of the red cross painted on the side. Two more just below the hatch out of which driver Corporal Mel Shepherd, 32, from Amble in Northumberland, had been sit-ting. The final bullet embedded in the name William Lee stencilled on the front of the vehicle, the name of Mel's seven-month-old son. "I just heard the cracks but didn't realise what was happening. I didn't know they were hitting us. My head was out of the hatch at the time and they struck just a foot away from my head. "I could see tracer rounds com-ing at me. We only have personal small arms for ourselves and patient protection. I think that's why they were having a go at us because we couldn't hit back." Vehicle Commander Sergeant Gary Moreland, 33, from Bedlington, said they had gone in to Az-Zubayr on a rescue mission. [Looking for the missing engineers] "We were going down the main street and a signal flair went up in the air. " I remember going past a picture ofSaddam Hussein and then there were bursts of gun-fire behind me." In the vehicle behind him Corporal Donald McClurg, 32, from Dumfries heard a shout of "contact right". He said: "I brought my weapon up and looked around to my right to see an RPG going straight past me, then another one went past. "I put my head down then and used my periscope and told my driver Sarah to get her head down. "We were under RPG fire going through the whole town." His vehicle too had been struck near the centre of its red cross painted on the side and another bullet had hit the name Rosie, painted on the side and surrounded with painted flowers, the name he intends to give to his new baby when his wife gives birth. She was due on last Thursday, but he has not heard yet. Driver Sarah Wilkinson, 19, from Chesterfield, said the first she knew of what was happening was the warning shot. "I said to Don 'look at that' then an RPG went straight over the top of me. "I was petrified but I got really quite excited. I didn't know whether to be scared or excited. "I didn't have a chance to baton down the hatch, I just kept my head down." Back on the edge of Az-Zubayr the Army is refusing to give up the aid effort. Even as fresh explosions roll across from the direction of Basra they are heading back into the town. Half an hour after their hasty departure they are setting up again, this time with more armoured vehicles for support. The gunmen stay away, but they are still out there and there is a long way to go.
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(News copy Published March 27) US TROOPS parachuted into northern Iraq last night as the coalition began to open up a new front against Saddam Hussein. A key airfield was taken by about 1,000 United States paratroopers from the army's 173rd Airborne Brigade who were dropped into the Kurdish controlled region, becoming the first sizeable American military presence in that part of the country. "This is the beginning of the northern front," a US official was quoted as saying. Meanwhile, George Bush, the US president, announced yesterday that he was sending 30,000 more troops to the Gulf to reinforce the coalition forces. The 4th Infantry Division, one of the best-equipped units in the US army, is to fly to the region by the weekend. The announcement came amid reports of Saddam's elite Republican Guard streaming out of Baghdad, bound for a decisive confrontation with US troops in central Iraq. Allied intelligence was reported to have detected a large convoy of 1,000 vehicles approaching US positions south of the Iraqi capital under cover of a blinding sandstorm. The reports were, however, played down by the Pentagon. British strike aircraft were last night over the south of the country, bombarding a separate Iraqi convoy that had burst out of Basra and was headed towards positions held by the Royal Marines on the Al Faw peninsula. It was not clear if the convoy of up to 120 vehicles, including Soviet-made T55 tanks, Type-59 artillery pieces and armoured personnel carriers, was launching a counter-attack or if the pro-Saddam forces were fleeing the city. US navy F-18 Super Hornets and RAF Harrier ground attack jets were immediately scrambled from their bases in Kuwait and dropped precision-guided munitions and cluster bombs on the Iraqi armour. From the ground, the column was pounded by AS90 heavy artillery from 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery and light field guns of 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery. Several vehicles were destroyed before the convoy turned off the main road and dispersed into the surrounding areas south of Basra. Before the operation in northern Iraq, several hundred special forces troops had been operating with Kurdish groups on the ground in the area. Northern Iraq is controlled by rival Kurdish factions and is protected from Saddam's army by US and British aircraft that have patrolled a no-fly zone since a failed Kurdish uprising after the 1991 Gulf War. A unit of the 173rd Airborne, based in Vicenza, Italy, jumped in to an airfield shortly before midnight, according to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Collins, of the US Army Southern European Task Force. "Approximately 1,000 troops went in," he said. More paratroops, tanks and other fighting vehicles are expected to follow. Tony Blair arrived in Washington last night to meet Mr Bush at his Camp David retreat for a war summit . The Prime Minister is understood to have braced himself to urge the Bush administration not to disregard the United Nations when plans are drawn up to rebuild Iraq. The coalition leaders will be briefed on the latest battlefield information, including the reports that US military intelligence spotted the Republican Guard convoy heading out of Baghdad in the direction of Najaf, the scene of the fiercest fighting of the war so far. The exact build-up of Iraqi troops was unclear, but it was reported that a force of up to 5,000 Republican Guard soldiers was heading south out of Baghdad . The elite fighting units were thought to have been taking advantage of two days of sandstorms to avoid being wiped out by coalition air power. Apache helicopter gunships, the main air defence for ground troops, have been grounded for 48 hours . Walter Rodgers, a CNN journalist who is based with the US 7th Cavalry, said the Republican Guard appeared to be heading straight for its position near Najaf, about 50 miles south of Baghdad. "Everybody's sitting on a very tight hair-trigger," he said. "They are some of the best forces Saddam has and are indeed a serious threat to the area we are in." However, Pentagon officials said they were aware only of "defensive repositioning" near Baghdad and had no information on large columns or convoys of Iraqis. Iraqi officials claimed the first battlefield success for the Republican Guard yesterday, saying a unit in central Iraq had attacked coalition troops and destroyed six vehicles. A US military officer said there had been a fierce battle for control of a bridge over the Euphrates river at Abu Sukhayr, 13 miles south-east of Najaf. During a 36-hour firefight that claimed up to 1,000 Iraqi lives, two US Abrams tanks were destroyed. The fate of the tank crews remained unclear. Another series of explosions rocked the centre of Baghdad overnight after a day of heavy air attacks aimed primarily at the outskirts of the Iraqi capital, where the Republican Guard is believed to be stationed. Earlier, guerrilla attacks were targeted at aid workers attempting to deliver the first batch of desperately needed food and water to civilians outside Basra. Two mortar bombs exploded 200 yards away from where aid was being distributed in the town of Az Zubayr, where British forces have faced stiff resistance from pockets of militia men armed with rocket-propelled grenades. The attack came at the end of a dramatic 24 hours in which rumours of a civilian uprising in Basra had resulted in British forces being engaged in sporadic combat throughout the area. British military commanders aim to ensure that humanitarian aid gets through to Az Zubayr and, ultimately, Basra. Outside Basra yesterday, a British man who travelled to Iraq to fight for Saddam's regime was reported to have surrendered. The man, in his mid-20s, handed himself over to Irish Guards, telling them he wanted to go home to Manchester.
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(Original news copy) Aid workers came under mortar and gun fire yesterday as they attempted to deliver the first batch of desperately needed food and water to Iraqi civilians in a town outside Basra. Two mortar bombs exploded 200 yards away from where the aid was being distributed in the town of Az Zubayr, where British forces have faced stiff resistance from pockets of militia men armed with rocket-propelled grenades. The aid workers, under British Army protection, withdrew but returned later to complete their task. The attack came at the end of a dramatic day in which British forces had moved in to Az Zubayr and amid reports of a civilian uprising against the Iraqi authorities in Basra. British forces led by the Black Watch battle group had come under attack on Tuesday night from artillery fire and they spent much of the night knock-ing out Iraqi positions in Basra. Tanks, artillery and mortar lines were destroyed, along with civilian vehicles armed with machine guns. Citizens opposed to Saddam Hussein's regime were reported to have attacked militia and security forces in Basra and to have stormed the headquarters of the Baath party in the city. British military commanders say that their aim is to ensure that humanitarian aid gets through to people in Az Zubayr and ultimately Basra. Last night fighting was continuing around Basra with reports of tanks belonging to the Republican Guard moving out of the city towards the south-east.
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