- AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar (Reuters)
- British Royal Marine commandos captured an Iraqi general and killed another
senior officer in clashes with Iraqi paramilitaries south of Basra on Sunday,
a British military spokesman said.
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- Group Commander Al Lockwood, spokesman at war headquarters
in Qatar, said senior Iraqi officers were mixed in with paramilitaries
who clashed with British Royal Marine commandos southeast of Iraq's second
city.
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- "I don't know what unit (he was from). I do know
that we have a general," Al Lockwood told Reuters.
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- Five other Iraqis were captured in the same clash, and
one Iraqi Republican Guard colonel was killed, he said. He gave no further
details of casualties. Qatar-based satellite television channel al-Jazeera
later quoted Lt. Gen. Walid Hamid Tawfiq, an Iraqi field commander in the
Basra region, as denying that a general had been captured and a colonel
killed.
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- According to al-Jazeera, Tawfiq said four British soldiers
were killed in the ongoing battles south of Basra.
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- Lockwood said the paramilitaries and officers had attempted
to leave the southeast of Basra and were heading west when they were engaged
in combat with elements of 3 Commando Brigade of the Royal Marines.
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- He said he believed the Republican Guard officers had
been sent to the city to help oversee resistance by the irregular forces
there.
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- British forces have surrounded Basra, Iraq's second city
of 1.5 million people, but have not entered it, hoping it can be wrested
from the control of President Saddam Hussein's government without the need
to fight street by street.
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- Fighting has disrupted food and electricity supplies
and forced many civilians to flee the city.
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