Day 12: No 'smoking guns', no huge breakthroughs, just a hint that Groundhog Day may be over

I'm afraid my reports are beginning to sound a little like Groundhog Day, said a radio reporter from Baghdad yesterday. Overnight, the news from the Iraqi capital was the same as it was the night before. And the night before that. Bombing has become virtually round the clock. On Day Twelve the reality that this will be a long war has set in.

There are now three categories of bombing target in Baghdad. Tomahawk cruise missiles home in on prestige sites ­ overnight it had been the Information Ministry and the palace of Saddam Hussein's son Qusay. To the south of the city, throughout the hours of darkness, American B-52s dropped 2,000lb bombs on the dug-in defence lines of the Medina Division of Saddam's crack troops, the Republican Guard. Three-quarters of the American bombing campaign is now being aimed at their positions around the capital.

It was the third set of targets that underscored the paradox of the task facing the coalition throughout Iraq. Cruise missiles were fired at civilian infrastructure targets. Among those hit was another telephone exchange ­ the sixth of 20 in the city ­ to destroy what the Allies describe as "command and control" capability. Telephone land-lines, which cannot be tapped like radio and sat-phones, are emerging as the Iraqi military's main mode of communication. They are also vital to the civilian population, which uses them after each bombing raid to ring around to ensure their relatives are safe. Destroying them out hardly endears the Allies to the Iraqi people.

The realisation is setting in that winning that battle will not be quick. Allied bombs had knocked out Iraqi television overnight. By mid-morning it was broadcasting again, but on a much weaker signal, presumably from a mobile transmitter somewhere. Yet even though what was shown was the usual diet of martial music and re-runs of press conferences with Iraqi ministers, plus footage of Saddam Hussein allegedly meeting top aides, including his two sons, people were out and about in the main marketplace in Baghdad buying fruit and vegetables and also large quantities of special TV aerials to cope with the weaker signal. In war, it seems, any information is better than none. At least that's what people feel.

The exchange of propaganda shots continued. Yesterday, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, issued another strongly worded warning to Syria and Iran. Damascus should stop supporting terrorists and Saddam Hussein, or face the consequences. Tehran received a similar shot across the bows.

But in response Arab opinion seems only to be consolidating. The Syrian foreign ministry said it hoped "to see the invaders defeated in Iraq". There was precious little talk about liberating the Iraqi people in newspapers in Jordan, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia, which is giving assistance to the US-led coalition. In Cairo, President Hosni Mubarak sought to identify himself more forcefully with the popular opposition to the invasion; in a speech to the Egyptian Third Army he said an ancient Arab civilisation would be destroyed if no solution was found in safeguarding international will while protecting Iraq's control of its land and national dignity. The images of civilian casualties are clearly taking a toll outside Iraq too.

Small wonder that, in a rare media interview, Tony Blair's PR Svengali, Alastair Campbell, admitted to an Australian journalist that he is facing an "uphill battle" combating propaganda from Arab outlets.

On the battlefield the first serious action of the day was in and around Nasiriyah, where US troops have been bogged down by stiff Iraqi resistance for a week. "Dinner in Nasiriyah tomorrow night, I'll buy," one senior US Marines commander boasted to a reporter, nine days ago as his troops moved on the city. For the first time yesterday that seemed a possibility.

At dawn, American marines staged a raid on Shatrah, to the north of the town, searching for Ali Hassan al-Majid, President Saddam's cousin known as "Chemical Ali" for his readiness to use chemical weapons. Some 5,000 extra troops were poured into the area after an AC-130 gunship was used to pound an Iraqi security complex there. To the east, in Suq ash Shuyukh, the Baath Party offices were hit by F/A-18 aircraft.

US troops have now uncovered two large arms caches in Nasiriyah, including 800 rocket-propelled grenades, 10,000 machine gun rounds, 300 mortar rounds and hundreds of artillery shells, as well as 300 chemical protection suits with masks and nerve agent antidotes, though no "weapons of mass destruction" were found.

But there was something that may prove more significant. "In Nasiriyah, we have gotten a lot of support from the local population," said one American officer, Lt-Col David Pere. "People are walking up to our line saying, 'You want to blow up that house three doors down'." As marines handed out food, water and medical supplies, commanders reported less sniping. No one was rash enough to predict a causal link.

But Group Captain Al Lockwood, spokesman for British forces in the Gulf, reported something similar elsewhere in southern Iraq: "What has become obvious in the last day or so is that in Basra and other towns the local population are now beginning to trust us, they are talking to us and giving us valuable information."

Hopes that relations will improve were boosted when British troops began pumping drinking water into southern Iraq. At the border with Kuwaiti a local aid official, Ali al-Mumin, presided over a ceremony at which water was piped into Iraqi trucks from an eight-inch diameter plastic pipe. It will supply two million litres a day ­ which, with consumption estimated at about seven litres per person a day, should be sufficient for more than a quarter of a million people. But the water will only be trucked to areas under secure Allied control such as the port of Umm Qasr and the nearby town of Umm Khayya.

Outside these areas the building of trust will be a laborious process. That much was clear from the BBC's embedded correspondent Caroline Wyatt who interviewed Iraqi civilians moving through the Allied lines. "Certainly nobody wants an occupying army," she reported. "Even those who'd like to see Saddam Hussein got rid of really don't trust the coalition. These are the people who were abandoned, deserted in their hour of greatest need when they actually did rise up in 1991. Everyone I talked with yesterday mentioned that.

"Even those too young to remember it themselves had been told that in their hour of need nobody was there to help them. They are going to wait until the British and Americans have quelled the resistance."

Elsewhere, the city of Najaf was almost encircled, with reports of intense shelling after an attempted break-out by Iraqi troops. US soldiers killed seven women and children when they opened fire on a car packed with civilians near the city. Two others were wounded when the driver failed to stop at a checkpoint and ignored warning shots.

At least 35 Iraqi troops were reported killed in Hindiyah, situated on the Euphrates between the sacred city of Karbala and the ruins of ancient Babylon, in what is reported to be the closest engagement yet to Baghdad. Dozens of prisoners told the Americans they belonged to the Guard's Nebuchadnezzar Brigade, based in Saddam's home area of Tikrit. The British Army said it had wiped out a significant amount of armour and infantry north of the Rumaila oilfields.

It has also rescued two Kenyan lorry drivers held captive by Iraqi soldiers for 10 days. Royal Marine commandos began patrolling the streets of Abu al-Khasib, a suburb of Basra which was taken on Sunday in the largest Royal Marine operation of the war so far, involving 1,000 troops. After a full day's fighting, five senior Iraqi officers and hundreds of soldiers were taken prisoner. The Army confirmed two British soldiers were killed during the attack, called "Operation James". One of the dead was from 212 Signal Squadron and the other from 40 Commando.

Mopping up operations were going on yesterday on the political front too. Tony Blair briefed world leaders by phone on his talks with President George Bush and the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. But at Mr Blair's meeting with his ministers, concern was expressed at the level of "friendly fire" incidents.

Yesterday's papers were full of angry quotes from the British troops fired upon by a US anti-tank A-10 aircraft, which had made two separate close-quarters runs on British Scimitar armoured cars, despite their Union flag idents. Reporters visiting an American Patriot missile battery at Camp Cobra, in Kuwait, were "encouraged not to ask questions about the 'friendly fire' incident at another battery which destroyed an RAF jet".

There were the first reports of conscientious objection, with two British soldiers facing courts martial after refusing to fight in Iraq because of civilian deaths. Commanding officers removed a private and an air technician from 16 Air Assault Brigade for speaking out against the morality of the campaign. They were sent back to Colchester barracks in Essex.

In the US the political scene was dominated by what the military men would call "consolidation". Washington was abuzz with whether the war plan had been altered, as most of the press suggested, which government sources repeatedly denied. The row over whether the US Defence Secretary had overreached himself in his relationship with his generals rumbled loudly on, with the CIA sticking in its "we told you so" dimesworth.

But it seems, so far, to have had little impact on public opinion; a poll in USA Today said about 70 per cent supported the war, though there was a sharp drop in the number of people who thought it was going well. Which is perhaps why the US TV channel NBC yesterday sacked the veteran journalist Peter Arnett for criticising US war plans in an interview with Iraqi state-run television.

President Bush assured an audience in Philadelphia that "day by day, we are moving closer to victory". General Powell, meanwhile, planned a trip to Brussels and Ankara to discuss plans for reconstruction.

In Iraq it seemed there had been a significant development on the western front, an area of military activity about which we have heard little. The US military briefing featured a special-forces raid on an airfield in western Iraq in which a number of Iraqi aircraft were destroyed. The trouble was that independent defence experts who examined the film found that the aircraft were pretty ancient ­ one was 54 years old ­ suggesting that they had been decoys. For what purpose, no one seemed clear.

Throughout the day US troops continued probing forays against the Republican Guard forces protecting Baghdad to the south-west. A convoy of more than 6,000 US Marines resumed its push towards Baghdad. The US 3rd Infantry Division made exploratory moves on the road towards the Iraqi capital at a chokepoint known as Karbala Gap, between Razzaza Lake and the Euphrates. It brought the 3rd Infantry Division within sight of Karbala. Other US units were said to have pushed north from Najaf as far as the small town of Hillah, just south-east of Karbala, where first reports of fierce fighting came in last night with 100 Iraqis killed.

In the House of Commons the Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, revealed that the coalition was now holding 8,000 Iraqi prisoners of war, though reports that one of them was a general were scotched by the MoD. "There have been as yet no defections of very senior politicians or very senior military commanders," Mr Hoon said.

From the US came suggestions that some prisoners ­ the first of whom were inspected by the Red Cross yesterday, in contrast with the US PoWs who the Iraqis are keeping hidden ­ might be taken out of the country. Those suspected of forcefully dissuading Iraqi troops from surrender may be shipped to join the 660 al-Qa'ida prisoners in the detention centre at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, military officers said.

An increasingly hard line seems to be emerging from Washington. In part it is prompted by fury over tactics such as the use of suicide bombers ­ Islamic Jihad announced yesterday that it will be sending more "martyrs" to Iraq from elsewhere in the Arab world. Another technique which is causing outrage is that of Iraqi guerrillas stringing wire across roads at a height where it would decapitate machine gunners standing on top of passing military vehicles.

It is "incumbent upon us to eliminate death squads keeping the people under their boot," said Lt-Gen James T Conway, who leads 85,000 marines and British ground troops.

US military lawyers were said to be drafting new criteria, setting aside rules of engagement they devised before the war. Those who have used civilians as human shields will be declared illegal combatants.

If it is going to be a long war it is also going to be a brutal one. The gloves are coming off.