UK forces fight way into Basra

British forces muscled into the outskirts of Iraq's second city of Basra early yesterday, capturing an industrial estate where Iraqi militia had spearheaded fierce resistance.

Military spokesmen said there was now only sporadic Iraqi defence and the battle was to win the hearts and minds of Basra's population - a claim they have made before. They said their job was made harder because ordinary people were reluctant to defy President Saddam Hussain's forces, recalling how the city's 1991 uprising against his Sunni-dominated government was brutally crushed.

British troops edged some two km towards the city's southern outskirts, through an industrial area, in the early hours, with six Challenger tanks and over a dozen armoured personnel carriers taking control of a disused factory. The badly damaged factory, with its large, green corrugated roof, had been used by Iraqi militia as a hideout to lead local resistance to the British advance, the British said.

Several doors were welded shut, suggesting the Iraqis had been well dug in.

Bullet holes pockmarked the walls, burnt-out cars smoldered outside, glass from smashed windows was strewn everywhere and, amid the destruction, a large, colourful Andy Warhol-style picture of Saddam. Two Iraqi militiamen lay dead near the factory.

British forces - Royal Scots Dragoons Guard and the Irish Guard – briefly came under mortar fire as they battled to take the factory, now shrouded beneath thick black smoke from oil-filled trenches set alight by the retreating Iraqis.

British officers said they were probably up against around 1,000 Iraqis holding out in Basra, most of whom had retreated from the industrial outskirts into the shanty town behind it.

They said regular troops from the Iraqi Army's 51st Division had pulled back into the city of 1.5 million, leaving much of their heavy equipment outside.

At a UK war headquarters briefing in Kuwait, army spokesman Colonel Chris Vernon said they were getting more information from local people on where Iraqi paramilitaries were hiding.

He said British forces were also using food and water deliveries to win the support of fearful civilians in Basra, but he acknowledged that the fear of reprisals by Saddam loyalists was a major obstacle preventing an anti-government revolt.