“We live in fear at night,” said 40-year-old Om Talal, her youngest child at her feet in the southern town of Al-Zubayr. “Already two of our houses have been destroyed. Why must they fire on our houses and kill civilians?” It is a scene repeated across southern Iraq, where only the port city of Umm Qasr has been captured by the invading forces who launched a thunderous ground assault a week ago with the aim of toppling Saddam.

Everywhere the operations on hide-outs of pro-Saddam militiamen, in small groups and mixing with the local population, are sapping US and British firepower. Residents say as many as 15 civilians have been killed in Al-Zubayr. Tanks, which were expected to roll into the main southern city of Basra early in the war, are bogged down in battles in civilian neighborhoods with a few Saddam loyalists proving strong enough to hold back the invasion. British tank fire was yesterday trained on a house on the outskirts of Al-Zubayr, 20 km south of Basra in an operation backed by machine-gun fire and grenades.

British soldiers said a nest of militiamen was holed up in the densely populated town of flat-roofed cement houses. “We’re targeting some militia holed up in that house over there,” said tank commander Sgt. Jeremy Rendle.