Word: basra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...they don't flinch at adopting guerrilla ruses damned by the Geneva Convention. They're willing to turn their AK-47s on Iraqis to keep them from surrendering. British officers say the Fedayeen are forcing the unwilling remnants of Iraq's 51st Infantry Division to continue the fight at Basra...
Political and cultural considerations aside, Arab viewers have other reasons to trust these networks. They have often had more accurate information. U.S. networks and the BBC reported a revolt against Iraqi troops by Shi'ite Muslims in Basra last week, airing video of allied forces firing supportive artillery into the city. On Fox News, anchor Neil Cavuto crowed, "Don't look now, but the Shi'ites have hit the fan!" But al-Jazeera had a correspondent inside Basra, which appeared relatively orderly--quiet streets and groups chanting pro-Saddam slogans. Later the Western networks backpedaled. And for four days after...
...fight to the death. The struggle for the city could draw U.S. troops into highly dangerous close-quarter urban combat and bring untold misery to Iraqi civilians subjected both to collateral damage caused by the allies and to the terror of Saddam's men. In the besieged cities of Basra, Nasiriyah and Samawah, Iraqi refugees and defectors said Fedayeen were slaughtering men and boys who refused to fight against the invading forces...
Saddam loyalists went even further just outside Basra, Iraq's second largest city, which was surrounded by British troops. British military officers said that members of the Black Watch Regiment saw more than 1,000 civilians--including babes in arms--crossing a bridge on foot, presumably to escape the besieged city. Witnesses said Iraqi troops, led by some of the 1,000 members of the Fedayeen who were holding out in the city, opened fire with machine guns, apparently fearful that the residents' departure would set off a civilian exodus from the city, inviting a British invasion. The Black Watch...
...standoff in Basra underscored a central dilemma facing the war planners as they plot their final assault on Saddam's regime: the longer the allies remain handcuffed by their desire to limit collateral damage, the longer the conflict will be--and perhaps the deadlier for coalition troops. "The war ultimately will boil down to how many of our soldiers we are willing to sacrifice to keep dead Iraqi civilians off al-Jazeera," says a Navy officer at the Pentagon. Defense officials say that as the battle for Baghdad is joined in coming weeks, the U.S.'s unusually tight restrictions...