US Marines were reported to have joined battle with a second division of Republican Guards dug in around the southern approaches. At Central Command in Qatar, American officials seemed to be upping the temperature with an anonymous briefing which said that the US was prepared to pay “a very high price” in casualties to take Baghdad. A figure of 1,000 possible casualties was mentioned.What will happen now is unclear. Military strategists said that the main thrust to Baghdad might come through the so-called Karbala gap between the Euphrates and a large lake to the west.

This would bring them to the south-west of the capital and the prospect of a bloody battle.Much speculation also surrounded the success of the past days’ relentless bombardment of the Republican Guard’s Medina Division. The fact that the Iraqis have apparently moved armoured forces from the Guard’s Nebuchadnezzar Division, which had been protecting the north of the capital, to support their Medina comrades suggested, American commanders said, that the air assaults had weakened the Medina Division. Some suggested the Iraqi forces had been “degraded” by as much as 50 per cent. Others warned that the loyalist troops had been broken into small groups and that many of the targets might have been decoys, leaving the main force untouched (as was the case with Serb tanks during the air bombing in Kosovo).What was clear was that Allied forces were consolidating elsewhere in Iraq. Near Kut on the south-eastern flank of the coalition’s three-pronged advance, US helicopters strafed the countryside to destroy mortar positions hidden in onion fields. At one spot, US troops found a drainage ditch that had been abandoned so hurriedly by Iraqi soldiers that they left behind their boots, stuck in mud.Around Basra, British forces continued their slow encirclement.

Though the British now control the south, north and west of Basra, the east remains open to the Iraqis. One officer has described the operation by his forces as “nibbling at the edges”. Women, children and the elderly are steadily leaving as the commandos wait for the order to take Basra.That they still wait is not the only evidence of continuing resistance. Massive supply convoys are now on the road from Kuwait to the front line around Baghdad. Some lines stretch for two or three miles, and ambushes are a continuing hazard. One was attacked from civilian vehicles ­ a white pick-up truck and what US Marines say looked like a taxi. Such guerrilla attackers are operating from deep inside urban areas.Some parts of southern Iraq are now secure The hot-spot of Nasiriyah was quiet yesterday.

US Marines destroyed two T-55 tanks near a bridge over the Euphrates in the centre of the city but, apart from that, US troops concerned themselves with the large queues waiting to get supplies from coalition troops.Things were quiet too in the rest of the British-controlled areas. So much so that troops in Umm Qasr, Zubayr, Rumaila and Safwan took off their helmets and donned berets instead, in order to appear more friendly.If the battle for Baghdad had begun in earnest, that did not mean the political infighting ceased back in the US. President Bush insisted he had complete faith in his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, despite growing reports of complaints in the ranks that Mr Rumsfeld had planned the war “on the cheap”. Mr Rumsfeld, in turn, sought to scotch rumours that the US was in surrender talks. Only unconditional surrender, he insisted, would bring the war to an end. Meanwhile, Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, arrived in Turkey trying to find an “accommodation” that would grant US forces greater access from the north. On Wall Street shares were volatile as investors continued to worry how long the conflict might last If the war was going better it was far from going smoothly..