Word: basra
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...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...
That proved a futile hope for the crew of a British Challenger 2 tank fighting outside Basra in pitch darkness last week. The crew blasted another Challenger, killing two compatriots inside. Among other friendly-fire episodes of the war so far: a U.S. Patriot missile shot down a British Tornado aircraft, killing two servicemen. Another soldier died after two British armored vehicles came under fire, possibly from a U.S. A-10 aircraft. U.S. officials are investigating another incident near Nasiriyah, in which one Marine unit fired on another, wounding more than...
Republican Guard 60,000-100,000 Controlled by Saddam's younger son and heir, Qusay, the Guard includes three divisions deployed around Baghdad and one near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. Guard forces crushed a Shi'ite uprising in Basra in 1991. Though the Guard's heavy weaponry is outdated, U.S. officials believe Saddam may have deployed chemical weapons to the Medina Division...