"I personally think this battle group could go and do Basra now," said Lieutenant Colonel Michael Riddell-Webster, commander of the Scottish Black Watch regiment.

But Riddell-Webster said that troops would only move into the city after they had been given the go-ahead from coalition war planners at US Central Command.

"We are a small cog in a very large military machine under US control.

"We also do not want another Stalingrad. The overriding priority is the avoid unnecessary civilian deaths and a street-by-street slogging match."

British troops including elements of the Black Watch and the Desert Rats have been camped on the outskirts of Basra for some 10 days but have said they are in "no rush" to make a final assault.

They have made a series of incursions into the city, including a raid to destroy a giant statue of Iraqi President Saddam, and also destroyed offices and meeting places of his ruling Baath Party.

British troops have been trying to win over the local population still gripped by fear after an uprising against Saddam at the end of the 1991 Gulf War was brutally crushed.

But as the soldiers tried to convince people of their good intentions by handing out thousands of leaflets Friday, heavy artillery hit their position.

"In the last couple of hours, they've been shooting at us with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and mortars.

"We have sent in eight armoured vehicles, three Challengers (tanks) and five Warriors (fighting vehicles) in order to neutralize the aggressors," Captain Mickey O'Flynn of the Desert Rats' Seventh Brigade told an AFP correspondent on the outskirts of the city.

O'Flynn said he believed "several hundred militiamen" were still entrenched in the city, surrounded by thousands of British troops.

"We are waiting to move into Basra," he added.

The British troops in towns under their control surrounding Basra have swapped their helmets for berets to put the local population at ease, while leaflets which show a British soldier shaking hands with an Iraqi man are also designed to win over hearts and minds.

"Be patient, together we will win," read the leaflets.

O'Flynn said that Basra residents who were passing through British checkpoints "are more friendly every day because they realise that the regime is collapsing".

Aid groups have expressed fears over the humanitarian situation within Basra although talk of a crisis has been downplayed.

Two trucks provided by the International Committee of the Red Crossleft Kuwait for Basra on Friday carrying medical supplies, giant water bladders and blankets.

Coalition forces and Iraqi security authorities operating in the area had given the ICRC security guarantees for its trucks to enter the area.

SPACE.WIRE