REFUGEES: Hundreds of refugees have left the southern Iraqi city of Basra, passing through British front lines blocking off the western side of the city.Families walked and drove ramshackle vehicles out of the city yesterday or walked in single file down a rail track, writes Paul Harris, near Basra
British troops stopped and searched them, looking for any signs that they may be Iraqi soldiers wearing civilian clothes.
Individuals who aroused suspicion, or were still wearing military clothes, were detained for questioning in rough pens made of barbed wire. One man, wearing a red checked shirt, had been stopped because he was still dressed in Iraqi army trousers.
British troops across southern Iraq are tense after Iraqi soldiers donned civilian clothes to launch a series of grenade and machine gun attacks on rear units.
Soldiers said the refugees described a town that was tense but still in the grip of an Iraqi military that had hidden large amounts of artillery and tanks in civilian and commercial areas of the city.
"They said that the army still had all their kit with them and were still in the town. These are ordinary people who just wanted to get out really," said one British soldier manning a checkpoint on a bridge over the Shatt al-Basra river that is the current front line.
Behind him smoke rose from several areas of Basra, which is Iraq's second-largest city and a key target in the British and American attack on the country.
A ruptured oil pipeline also gushed flames and thick black smoke on the British side of the river. British artillery guns fired occasional shells but soldiers said they were hitting military targets on the far eastern side of the city.
However, there was little sign of the major uprising in Basra that British officials have been hoping for and had hinted had begun earlier in the week.
Civilian vehicles and trucks could be seen driving through the city suburbs only a kilometre away. Through a shimmering heat haze civilians could be seen walking in the streets.
However, the evidence of fierce fighting over previous days was all around. British troops man regular checkpoints on all the main roads heading into Basra and they watch over a landscape littered with the evidence of major Iraqi casualties.
Burned-out tanks and armoured vehicles are scattered throughout the flat fields around the city. Unlike in areas of Iraq further south, where many Iraqi vehicles were simply abandoned, these have been destroyed. Some lie in the middle of the road, their scorched remains lying by shell holes blasted into the Tarmac of the main roads.
To the south of Basra fighting broke out earlier when a column of 14 ageing Iraqi T-55 tanks had broken out of the city's southern boundary heading for the oil fields and the city of Umm Qasr. However, a detachment of Challenger tanks from the Scots Dragoon Guards intercepted them and destroyed them all. British military sources said they were perplexed by why the Iraqis would leave the city. "It might be a sign of their increasing desperation," said one. - (Guardian Service)