SOUTHERN IRAQ, 24 March 2003 — Iraqi troops fought US advance units overnight near the central Shiite city of Najaf as an armored American advance moved closer to the capital Baghdad.

Reuters correspondent Luke Baker, traveling with units of the US 3rd Infantry Division, saw a limited clash with Iraqi troops 70 km southeast of Najaf that held up the US advance overnight.

At the southern tip of Iraq, a firefight between US and Iraqi forces broke out yesterday in the town of Umm Qasr, one day after US officials said they had taken control of the strategic port there.

Inland, US officers told Baker there was heavier fighting barring the way north, close to Najaf itself, which is just 160 km south of the capital.

The Iraqi authorities also reported a battle in the desert near Najaf, an important religious center for the Shiite Muslim majority on the western bank of the Euphrates river.

Some US advance columns have covered about two thirds of the 500 km to Baghdad in two days since they and their British allies poured over the Kuwaiti border in an invasion to oust Saddam.

Najaf is the closest major ground fighting has come to the capital, which suffered another night of bombing, though nothing like the pounding it took the previous night.

Baghdad suffered fresh air raids yesterday morning that made the earth shake. Iraq says three civilians have been killed in bombing so far, and scores wounded.

A Reuters correspondent also saw an overnight air raid on the northern city of Mosul. A correspondent for the Al-Jazeera Arabic television network in Mosul said explosions had been heard before dawn west of the city near the border with Syria.

Iraq said in a broadcast statement that US forces had fled after a desert clash near the city. The local leader of Saddam’s Baath party was killed in the fighting, it added.

Speaking at about 3.00 a.m. from a point some 70 km southeast of Najaf, Baker said the US unit he was with was held up, but officers were confident of moving on toward the city where other US units were meeting stiffer resistance.

US commanders believe the Medina Division of Saddam’s Republican Guard, better equipped than the regular army, is holding Najaf.

“US officers say the tanks and armored infantry up ahead are involved in what they call ‘small-scale enemy contact’,” Baker said. “I’ve seen a couple of what look like muzzle flashes from tanks, but no incoming shells.”

US and British officials declined to say whether their forces had taken control of Basra, Iraq’s second city in the far south, after a US officer reported winning a battle on the outskirts on Saturday, taking many prisoners.

But Al-Jazeera, quoting Iraqi medics, said 50 people were killed when US F-16 planes bombed near Basra.

Raw video footage, beamed across the Arab world by the Qatar-based satellite channel, showed a child with half its head blown off. “It’s a huge mass of civilians,” one angry woman told Al-Jazeera, standing among the wounded. “It was a massacre.”

The report could not be independently confirmed. US officials declined to say whether their planes had bombed Basra.