Tanks head out of Basra to take on British troops

A column of 70 to 120 Iraqi tanks and armoured personnel carriers was reported to be breaking out of Basra, Iraq's second city, last night and heading for Royal Marine positions to the south.

Allied aircraft were sent to attack the column after British radar detected it following the coast road along the Shatt al-Arab waterway towards the Al-Faw peninsula, where the marines came ashore. A British drone was also sent up to monitor the breakout. Whether the Iraqis were seeking to recapture lost ground or to escape unrest in Basra was not clear, but the action contradicted yesterday's claim by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, that "the regime has effectively lost control of southern Iraq".

The sudden Iraqi movement followed a day of confusion over events inside Iraq's second city, with British forces waiting on the outskirts as talk of an uprising faded away.

"We have a predicament about whether to go in," said a senior British officer. "Of course we would like to do things that give this [unrest] momentum. That may or may not mean going in. We don't want to cause big civilian casualties among the very people we hope will be warmly disposed towards us."

On Tuesday night it appeared for a brief while that the 1.3 million Shias in the city had begun a long-predicted revolt against Saddam Hussein's regime. Tony Blair told Parliament that there had been "some limited form of uprising", but by the time he made the announcement the trouble seemed to have died down.

The al-Jazeera television channel said Basra was peaceful, while an Iraqi Shia group based in Iran said: "Some disturbances took place in different parts of Basra, but it was not widespread and it was not an intifada [uprising]. The people chanted slogans against Saddam Hussein."

Commanders outside Basra speculated that opposition elements in the city would be reluctant to show their hand until assured of success. "The intelligence picture is small, but building," one source said.

Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, a spokesman for Central Command in Qatar, admitted yesterday that the situation in Basra was "very confusing, to say the least", although he added: "We saw fighting in the city between Iraqis – some of them in uniform, some not." Other military sources said about 1,000 paramilitaries had fired mortars into crowds of demonstrators.

British forces silenced the Iraqi mortar positions with an artillery barrage, and the Baath party headquarters in the north of the city was destroyed by a 2,000lb satellite-guided bomb. According to reports from near Basra yesterday, all that remained was a large crater between a school and a hospital, which were both undamaged.

Some relief came to the city's population yesterday with the partial restoration of water supplies after six days. A Red Cross team allowed into Basra from Kuwait said its engineers had reconnected about half the water supply. But much of the city remains dependent on river water that has been polluted by sewage upstream, creating the risk of cholera, typhoid, tetanus and hepatitis A.