SHOCK AND AWE FOR BRITISH-US FORCES IN IRAQ

LONDON 23 Mar. (IPS) Sunday, the fourth day from the start of the American-led "Shock and Awe" operations aimed at topple the regime of Saddam Hoseyn in Baghdad was the worst for the Anglo-American forces, with three major incidents that both shocked and awed both London and Washington.    

A U.S. missile shot down a two-man British plane;

Terry Lloyd, a senior correspondent of the Britiain's Independent Television Network (ITN) was killed and two members of his team, fired on by American soldiers;

The Qatar-based independent Arab television al Jazira showed a videotape of at least 10 US Prisoners Of War (POW), including one female soldier, and a room with some 15 bodies of US troops.

An American soldier was held in Kuwait, accused of having tossed a grenade into a military campment, killing one and wounding 15 comrades;

“The war promises harder days ahead, but we remain determined to liberate the Iraqi people from the yoke of the dictator Saddam Hoseyn”, a visibly disappointed and annoyed President George Bush told journalists at Camp David

The live broadcast of the American POW included also footage of a battlefield area in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya with additional corpses of US soldiers as well as struck military equipment.

The videotape also shown how the Iraqis investigate the American POWs. The prisoners were questioned on air and gave their names, military identification numbers and home towns.

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Air Force conceded that there were American soldiers missing, but said that there were fewer than 10 troops unaccounted for in southern Iraq.

Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defence Secretary said Sunday it was possible that Iraqi forces had taken U.S. prisoners, saying there were unaccounted soldiers and journalists in the combat zone.

He noted that under the Geneva Conventions governing prisoners of war, "It's illegal to do things to POWs that are humiliating to those prisoners".

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan had said that captured enemy soldiers would soon be shown on state television, adding that the war was going well for Iraq.

"Within a few hours you will see the captured enemy soldiers who harassed Souq al-Shuyukh on Iraqi television and you will see the burned tanks in Souq al-Shuyukh", Ramadan told a news conference on Sunday.

Souq al-Shuyukh is southeast of the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya that the U.S. had reported to capture, but like in the case of Um al Qasr, they latter confirmed having encountered "strong resistance" from the Iraqis.

Incidentally, both Ramadan and American commanders said the war was “going well” for them.

"The military operation is going in an excellent way and the situation is comfortable for Iraq", Ramadan told journalists in Baghdad, echoed latter by American officials, saying despite fierce resistance they encounter from the Iraqi army, the operation Shock and Awe is progressing.

Earlier, it was reported that U.S. Marines battled for control of Nassiriya, taking "significant" casualties in a fight to open a route north to Baghdad, military officials said.

Reuters new agency quoted military officials as saying the Marine battalion spearheading the fight had suffered significant casualties in the battle.

A total of 11 U.S. soldiers were captured after taking a wrong turn, and 50 military personnel have been wounded in the massive firefight in Nassiriya, ABCNEWS reported Sunday.

The downing of the two-man British Tornado, returning from a mission over Iraq, by a Patriot missile fired by its American crew was Britain's third air accident in as many days since the start of the Iraqi war on Thursday.

"We can confirm that a Tornado GR4 aircraft...was engaged near the Kuwaiti border by a Patriot missile battery. The crew are listed as missing", a statement said.

British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon voiced regret at the loss, and said an urgent review was underway.

"There is no single technological solution to this problem. It is about having a whole set of procedures in place. Sadly on this occasion they have not worked," Hoon told BBC television.

Patriots are designed to intercept enemy missiles and the mistaken firing at a British plane is a blow for morale as British and U.S troops meet resistance from Iraqi forces on the ground.

Officials were keen to stress the losses thus far were slight in comparison to the number of missions flown, but it was the third air accident in as many days, with 14 British troops already killed after a U.S. Sea Knight helicopter crashed in Kuwait on Friday, killing eight British soldiers and four U.S. Marines, followed on Saturday, when two Royal Navy helicopters from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal -- Britain's flagship in the war -- collided in mid-air, killing six Britons and one American.

"We have sadly witnessed the sacrifices our forces are ready to make for our safety and security", Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in the People newspaper before the third air loss. "And we have to be ready for more sadness and setbacks ahead".

In the 1991 Gulf War to drive invading Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, nine British troops were killed accidentally by so-called "friendly fire."

Terry Lloyd, a senior correspondent of the Britiain's Independent Television Network (ITN) was killed and two members of his team, Belgian cameraman Fred Nerac and Hoseyn Osman, a translator from Lebanon, remain missing, ITN said in a statement. A fourth crew member, Daniel Demoustier, was injured in Saturday's incident at Iman Anas, near Basra, but was able to get to safety.

ITN said Lloyd, 51, and his team apparently were fired on by forces from the U.S.-led coalition while driving toward coalition lines, accompanied by vehicles driven by Iraqis, including a truck filled with soldiers. ITN said the Iraqis might have been intending to surrender.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Sa’id 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.

As-Sahaf said Sunday 77 civilians were killed and 366 others injured by US air strikes on the southern Iraqi city of Basra. The dead and the injured were victims of cluster bombs, he told a press conference in Baghdad.

Huge blasts took place Sunday afternoon in west Baghdad as planes pound a single target in the city, according to Reuters. "The earth shook under our feet and buildings shook.

"From what we have seen in the last few days, I think these must have been some of the biggest bombs dropped in Baghdad so far", one correspondent reported, as Iraqi troops tried to capture two U.S. or British pilots said to have ejected over the city and fallen into the river.

Television pictures from the bank of the Tigris showed speedboats searching the river and yelling soldiers firing volleys of shots into a bush near the edge of the river.

Quoting witnesses, al Jazira television said two Western pilots had come down by parachute and that troops were searching for them. But the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff discounted the Iraqi claims. ENDS ALLIES CASUALTIES 23303