US rushes reinforcements to crush Iraqi resistance in Nassiriya

Thousands of US troop reinforcements are being sent to overwhelm Iraqi fighters holding on in Nassiriya, the city straddling the Euphrates river where American supply lines are repeatedly ambushed.

As many as 5,000 soldiers, including some special forces units, are being sent to support 7,000 US marines who have been fighting for control of its narrow streets and bridges. The continuing battle is an embarrassment for the US central command, which claimed on March 21 that the area had been secured.

For the past week, however, it has been the scene of fierce fighting. Senior US officers acknowledge that Nassiriya occupies such an important strategic position on the drive north to Baghdad that it is too dangerous to bypass active Iraqi units. The city is consequently sucking in troops originally intended for the main advance.

Yesterday US marines discovered abandoned chemical suits, masks and nerve gas antidote during a raid on buildings used by Iraq's 11th Infantry Division. Several Iraqi paramilitary bases in nearby towns were also raided. Air strikes were called in on the settlement of Suq al Shuyukh, to the north-east, from where Iraqi forces are thought to have mounted assaults on US convoys.

Nassiriya - which lies close to the ruins of the biblical city of Ur, in which the patriarch Abraham is said to have been born - has acquired a reputation in recent days for dangerous street fighting.

"It was kind of like patrolling parts of LA," Staff Sergeant Robert DeArnon, a reservist who is a police officer in civilian life, told the Los Angeles Times. "Except in LA, gangsters take a few shots at you with .45s and then run. Here it was with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]."

Pentagon officials on Sunday admitted that nine US marines had been killed in an ambush near the city in a prolonged engagement with Iraqi tanks and militiamen.

US troops are hastily constructing an additional bridge over the Euphrates near Nassiriya in an effort to open up new supply lines which do not have to pass through built up areas of the city, where Iraqi units are still operating.