Heavy fighting in the south

US Marines battled for control of the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya yesterday, taking “significant” casualties in a fight to open a route north to Baghdad, military officials said.

They confirmed that a number of their troops were killed and wounded in heavy fighting, following Iraqi claims that up to 25 coalition troops had been killed in battle.

Reuters Correspondent Sean Maguire, travelling with the Marines First Regiment south of the city, said he could see explosions and plumes of smoke over Nassiriya, which lies on Iraq's Euphrates river about 225 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The firefight at Nassariya blocked an advance by US forces, who had earlier reported securing two key bridgeheads to enable them to cross the Euphrates and strike north towards the capital.

Maguire said military officials believed the bridgeheads were secure but that the area between was not.

He also said there was heavy US helicopter traffic over the area, and that hundreds of trucks and armored personnel carriers had stopped their advance.

Iraqi Information Minister Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told a news conference in Baghdad that foreign invaders headed to Nassiriya had been "taught a lesson they will never forget."

"We have placed them in a quagmire from which they can never emerge except dead," he said.

Speeding columns of the US Third Infantry had covered nearly two-thirds of the 500 km from the Kuwaiti border in two days, before running into Iraqi resistance near Najaf on the southwest bank of the Euphrates.

A strike across the river toward the Tigris river and Baghdad could create a pincer movement on the capital.

US officers believe units of President Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guards the Medina Division face them at Najaf and at other cities south of Baghdad.