Basra is next:
US and UK forces surround Basra city
news.ft.com
By Mark Nicholson at US Central Command in Qatar
Published: March 21 2003 19:06 | Last Updated: March 21 2003 19:06
Coalition forces were on the outskirts of Basra late on Friday as British forces and US marines moved to surround Iraq's second city. They hoped to secure its surrender without having to engage in bloody street fighting.
British paratroopers and other elements from 16 Air Assault Brigade have taken up positions on the west of the city, around the main airport.
Units of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force with heavy armour are co-ordinating a flanking move around the east of the city with two British battlegroups of the UK 7th Armoured Brigade, made up of the Blackwatch and the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
Military sources at Central Command indicated that the coalition force intends to sit on outskirts of the city and "prod and probe defences". They insisted there was no timetable to enter and take the city.
Basra is the keystone to military control of the predominantly Shia southern Iraq.
Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander of British forces in the Gulf, said both airborne and land forces were pushing north after Thursday's surprise assault, in which US marines took "military control" of the town of Umm Qasr, Iraq's only deep-water port and captured strategic oil infrastructure on the al Faw peninsula to the east.
One US marine was killed in the assault on the town - the first coalition casualty killed in action.
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the UK's chief of defence staff, said that the port would be opened up to coalition ships to bring in humanitarian and military supplies, once British minesweepers had cleared them of mines.
Heavy armoured units also seized the Rumailah oilfield in the south on Friday, Iraq's second largest, after encountering some Iraqi resistance. Few of the 1,700 wellheads were destroyed.
"The US marines got across pretty smartly into those oil fields. It looks as though it's not a huge disaster," said Major-General Albert Whitley, the British coalition commander in charge of humanitarian aid and reconstruction said in Kuwait yesterday. "It means that money can flow for the benefit of the Iraqi people."
British military officials cautioned that UK forces, which will spearhead the Basra assault, would seek to avoid bloody tussles if troops met strong resistance.
"We will look at Basra, but we will not enter it until we are broadly welcomed there."
The advance on Basra, less than 60 miles north of Kuwait, came as Royal Marines from 40 and 42 commando units took control of the Faw, and as British Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles continued to advance north towards Basra.
Joint US and British forces are keen to secure and subdue southern Iraq, and particularly Basra, as soon as possible during the campaign, aiming to make it an exemplar of occupation and "liberation."
The strategic aims for British troops is to open up the south as soon as possible to humanitarian aid and show Iraqi civilians elsewhere that the arriving forces were "benign". "As soon as we've got the routes open, we'll push in humanitarian aid, we must do that." said Air Marshal Burridge.
It is hoped that a relatively bloodless occupation of Basra and southern Iraq would also create some stability in Iraq's Shi'a Moslem heartland - a vital political objective given the risks of a Shi'a uprising spreading more widely across the Gulf.
Sir Michael said there was "evidence of large-scale capitulation" on the thrust towards Basra. He added that Royal Marines had also taken the surrender of "several hundred" Iraqi troops as they |
