BBC-News: Sunday, 23 March, 2003, 14:15 GMT

US-led forces have been encountering pockets of stubborn resistance as they press ahead towards the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

American Popcorn-Rambos ran when they met Iraqi resistance, for it was not in the script, Iraqis firing at them. Especially when "the tough" and "the good" use high-tech weaponry against "stone age" guns, used by the outnumbered Iraqis.

In one of the longest-running challenges so far in the conflict, air strikes were called in on the southern port town of Umm Qasr to overcome about 120 Iraqis - including suspected elite Republican Guards - firing against US forces.

US aircraft have also bombed Iraqi positions in Nasiriya further north where an estimated 500 Iraqis - using tanks and mortars - stopped US Marines trying to secure a route through the town. ...

In Baghdad - which is being hit by fresh air strikes - senior Iraqi officials have been holding news conferences, praising the Iraqi "heroes" and vowing to punish the "mercenaries" once they reach towns.

At least 77 people have been killed in the southern city of Basra and 366 wounded, they said. ...

Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Iraqis had captured 35 American prisoners of war, and promised to produce them for the television cameras later on Sunday. ...

The pictures show tanks and then a US Marine Harrier jet bomb the building where the Iraqis were holding out, and firing from the compound stop.

It is not known how many Iraqis were killed.

The battle had been going on for more than 36 hours after US forces secured the harbour - Iraq's only deep-water port.

Coalition forces have so far been unable to use the port.

Iraq's Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf praised Iraqi "heroes" at Umm Qasr saying US and UK "mercenaries" were in for "shock and awe" - using the coalition term for the tactics being used in the war against Saddam Hussein.

In other developments:

Iraqi authorities search the Tigris River in Baghdad for what witnesses say was a coalition pilot ejecting over the city - but coalition spokesmen say no pilot is missing

A British RAF Tornado aircraft is missing after failing to return from a mission, central command in Qatar says. British military sources said it may have been shot down by US Patriot missile batteries.

British intelligence reports suggest Iraqi President Saddam Hussein emerged alive from the initial US air raid on Baghdad but left the area in an ambulance, Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien says

In northern Kuwait, one US soldier is killed and 12 others injured in a grenade attack at a US military camp; the main suspect - a US soldier - is arrested

The Pentagon also says that Iraq has not fired any Scud missiles so far - and US forces have found no caches of weapons of mass destruction.

Baghdad 'haze'

The BBC's Rageh Omaar says the city is shrouded by a choking black haze from Iraqi fires lit to confuse the coalition planes.

But US forces have been halted by Iraqi troops about 70 km (45 miles) south-east of Najaf after about two hours of fighting.

Iraqi television said the local Ba'ath Party leader had been killed in the fighting.

Minister Al-Sahaf said 106 civilians had been injured so far in Baghdad.

Readers against the war:

'One thousand bombs on Bagdad in one night? That's no bravery: it's the action of a schoolyard bully.' ... I'm ashamed to be British.'

Norwich's Judy Moore is on the march, too. The director of counselling at the University of East Anglia is appalled by a terrible likeness: 'I was struck by the similarity between watching buildings in Bagdad being blown up and watching the planes fly into the Twin Towers. This really is weapons of mass destruction.'

Another ramification of the Blair/Bush action worries Dr. Terence Moore, a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. He feared for Britain's relationship with France: 'Blair has wilfully misrepresented the French position. There was no French veto - there was a US veto on the French pleas for more inspection time.'

Financial service director John Holder is disturbed by US 'Shock and Awe' tactics: 'One thousand bombs on Bagdad in one night? That's no bravery: it's the action of a schoolyard bully.'

Ann Keith, a librarian of Grantchester, fears not just for Iraq, but for a widespread rejection of British democratic institutions: 'Robin Cook's decision has had a big impact. That Commons vote wasn't a free vote - it was whipped, and I'm ashamed to be British.'

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, London, 23 March 2003, page 7