Claims of British airborne casualties are denied

As American bombers continue to attack the Iraqi frontline in the north, the Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed, Saeed al-Sahaf, said yesterday that Iraqi forces had thwarted a landing by British troops near the city of Mosul in the north of the country.

The al-Jazeera television network said the Iraqis had killed 10 British troops and showed footage of local tribesmen driving what it said was a captured Land Rover around the streets of Baaj, which is to the south-west of Mosul.

"The British forces which were dropped there have been eliminated mostly on the [battle] field, except for those who fled," the Iraqi minister told a news conference.

He said the Iraqis had seized most of the troops' equipment and vehicles. Al-Jazeera said the Iraqis had destroyed 14 tanks and other vehicles.

"It is a complete defeat ... Amazingly the Americans have pushed the British to do that. They pushed them ahead as if it is an experiment. The result was very tragic for the British," Mr Sahaf said. The Information Minister provided no more details about the alleged landing, which could not be independently confirmed. A British spokesman at the Central Command headquarters in Qatar said he knew nothing of British forces attempting to land in northern Iraq.

It is not wholly unlikely that British special forces should be operating in northern Iraq though none has been sighted. The United States has been trying to keep Baghdad's attention at least partly focused on the inactive northern front by using special forces teams usually co-operating with local Kurdish peshmerga.

America has also been heavily bombing the positions along the ridge lines and hills where there are Iraqi bunkers.

That is not necessarily a prelude to a larger assault in the immediate future. The bombing has also led to an increased flow of Iraqi army deserters and the Iraqis pulling back to closer to Kirkuk. Kurdish sources said that 16 Iraqi soldiers attempting to desert had been shot dead by other Iraqis on the road between the heavily bombed army position at Kalak and Mosul.

Kirkuk and Mosul have been targeted in recent days as Washington slowly moves troops into the region to open a new front in its ground war against Iraq, which has been waged mainly from the south via Kuwait.

From a hilltop position some nine miles to the north-east of Kirkuk, Reuters reporters watched as pairs of fighter jets circled in the sky above before dropping bombs on or close to Buyuk Hisar, a military stronghold just north of Kirkuk.

From close to the village of Cheman, in the Kurd- controlled north of Iraq, the reporters saw nine explosions and heard more than 50 in total during more than two hours of bombing. They also heard gunfire, but where the sound came from was unclear.

Mamad, the mayor of the Kurd-controlled village of Sangaw near Kirkuk, said the raids had been more frequent over the past 24 hours. "We have heard them every few hours," he said. Like many Kurdish officials, Mamad has donned his military fatigues in anticipation of fighting. "This is the heaviest attack so far," Mam Rostam, a Kurdish commander, said in the town of Chamchamal.