IRAQ:US AIRCRAFT attacked Shia militia in Basra for the first time in the current round of fighting as intense battles continued between supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr and tens of thousands of Iraqi forces in a crackdown personally supervised by Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
British troops, based at the city's airport, were kept away from the operation described by US president George Bush as "a defining moment in the history of Iraq".
American fighter jets dropped bombs on a mortar team and a militia stronghold in Basra, said Maj Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman. The number of casualties was unknown.
As protests spread across Iraq, US aircraft also attacked Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, killing at least five civilians, according to Iraqi police and hospitals.
"There have been engagements going on in and around Sadr City. We've engaged the enemy with artillery, we've engaged the enemy with aircraft, we've engaged the enemy with direct fire," Maj Mark Cheadle, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said later.
Defying a curfew, protesters again attacked the US-protected Green Zone in the capital with mortars and rockets. Elsewhere at least 22 people, including six civilians, were killed in fierce fighting in the southern cities of Mahmoudiya, Nasiriya - now held by elements of Sadr's Mahdi army - and Kut, according to reports from police and army officials cited by news agencies.
In Basra, Abdel Qader Jassim, the defence minister, admitted Iraqi security forces were "surprised" by the resistance they had met. At least 120 people, described by Iraqi commanders as the "enemy", were reported to have been killed and 450 wounded in four days of fighting.
Mr Maliki, head of the Shia-dominated government, initially set a 72-hour deadline for fighters to give up their weapons. He extended that to April 8th yesterday and offered cash for any heavy weapons handed over in a clear indication that the offensive by 15,000 Iraqi troops and a similar number of police, would take longer than planned.
British defence officials said they were carefully monitoring a "developing operation likely to take time". British forces were providing medical and logistical support and air surveillance, they said.
But they made it clear that the British government and military commanders did not want to intervene. "The operation was planned, implemented, and executed by the Iraqis. We will only intervene if requested by the Iraqis," the British ministry of defence said.
As if to drive home the point, an official added: "It is their operation, their responsibility to bring security to Basra and Iraq as a whole."
Mr Maliki has said that the operation, nicknamed Sawlat al-Fursan or Charge of the Knights, is targeting criminals, not Sadr's militia, and has vowed "no retreat". But distinguishing the Mahdi army from criminals appears to be cutting little ice among Sadr's supporters, many of whom believe that US and Iraqi forces have used a ceasefire to prepare to attack them.
Many Sadrists believe the Baghdad government is siding with the Badr organisation, a rival militia allied to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. -