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CNN SHOWDOWN: IRAQ
British fighting Iraqi Military Coming Out of Basra
Aired March 26, 2003 - 12:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR, KUWAIT CITY: I want to immediately go to our Christiane Amanpour. She's now in southern Iraq. She's moving in with British forces.
Christiane, what's going on?
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN SR. INT'L CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, the focus, of course, at the moment militarily is on Basra. And of those reports we had last night as to whether there may have been an uprising.
We did get reports from the British military that they thought there may have been the beginnings of an uprising last night. But then the Iraqi military inside Basra had started to turn their guns on the civilians.
Today the reports are that the British are fighting with Iraqi military, who are coming out of Basra. Later on we were told some people, some of those Iraqi military coming out of Basra were in fact surrendering. So what we've got is a situation where the British are not sort of launched counter insurgency measures. This is what we've been told by military spokespeople here.
That the wearing down of the resistance inside Basra is taking on the classic counter-insurgency type of warfare. That, we're warned, could take some time.
Now, in the meantime, the humanitarian situation is rather acute. British troops went into a town called Ouzu Bare (ph), which is outside of Basra. As they went in, they were watched by members of the civilian population there. At one point we hear reports now from Ouzu Bare (ph), when they were delivering humanitarian aid they were fired upon, sniped upon from a building and they returned fire.
So this situation here is not at all clear or secure. And there are still so-called irregulars, at least, as well as the military population, which are taking on pot shots and other kind of military action toward the British troops.
There's also been a delivery of humanitarian aid at a town south of here, called Sathwan (ph) just inside the Iraqi border from Kuwait. There what they call low-level humanitarian aid was delivered, packets of food, water. It was quite a chaotic scene because there was lot of people around, a lot of villages desperate for that food and water. And did all they could to grab the limited supplies that there were. In addition the first convoy of aid went into Umm Qasr area. This was from Kuwait. There were lorries that had been stacked up waiting to go in. And they went in today. The big aid ship, we understand, the British ship, is due to arrive at the port of Umm Qasr tomorrow. The British are eager to get aid out and about to the population -- Wolf.
BLITZER: CNN's Christiane Amanpour, she's in southern Iraq, near Basra right now.
Christiane, thanks very much. Be careful where you are. We'll be talking to you very, very soon.
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