SOUTH OF BASRA, 25 March 2003 — Roaming bands of Iraqi soldiers were preying on invasion troops in southern Iraq yesterday while the bulk of the US-led force pushed north toward Baghdad.

British troops deployed outside the main southern city of Basra have come under fire from small groups of Iraqi soldiers still hiding out in areas which were supposed to have already been brought under control.

A British military police checkpoint around 20 kilometers south of Basra was hastily dismantled yesterday after an explosion some 200 meters away. A sweep of the area identified three “hot contact points” nearby.

“A hot contact point is where our soldiers are getting shot at,” said a British sergeant, one of several manning the checkpoint since the early morning.

“This area has become less secure and we’re going to move.”

Iraqi militia armed with rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), hand grenades and AK-47 rifles were on the prowl further up the road to Basra, around an oil refinery a few kilometers east of the checkpoint and on waste ground to the west, soldiers said.

Two columns of gray smoke rose over Basra. The city has been under attack by mainly British forces for three days, prompting civilians to flee in battered cars crammed full of belongings.

Troops have reached the outskirts of Basra but pockets of Iraqi resistance behind their frontlines appear to have forestalled a full assault.

Some of the tanks which raced up the main Basra road from Kuwait at the weekend have spun around and moved back in the direction of the border to deal with security alerts.

A group of around 10 Iraqi soldiers armed with RPGs were reported close to the town of Safwan near the Kuwaiti border late on Sunday, sparking an after-dark security operation.

Yesterday morning, more Iraqi soldiers were sighted a few kilometers away at the side of the main highway to Baghdad.

Several thousand rank-and-file Iraqi soldiers have surrendered to US and British forces since ground troops launched an invasion late on Thursday.

A British officer said the small bands still roaming the southern desert scrub could well be part of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s loyal Republican Guard.

“They’ve got nothing to lose from holding out and everything to gain,” he said. “But to us, the resistance doesn’t appear to be organized.”

The mostly Shiite Muslim population of southern Iraq is not known for its affection for Saddam.

An uprising in the south after the 1991 Gulf War was brutally suppressed and there are fears that Saddam’s most loyal supporters could suffer reprisal attacks if the Iraqi leader is toppled by the US-led invasion.

Kuwaiti firefighters put out one of the seven oil well fires blazing in southern Iraq yesterday amid the sporadic guerrilla-style resistance.

A team from Kuwait Oil Company said it was working at the southern end of the 75-km-long Rumaila oilfield near the border with Kuwait.

Only seven of Rumaila’s 500 wells are ablaze, but another 10-15 have been mined, the Kuwaiti team leader said. He said he saw explosive fuses leading up to the wellheads.