Eyewitness: Basra's endless human tide

In an extraordinary report from the outskirts of the besieged city, Andrew Buncombe watches the British Army attempt to stem the flow of thousands of Iraqis that have been attempting to leave their hometown and - more bizarrely - to return to it

On the Al Zubayr bridge on the outskirts of Basra the endless human traffic flowed both ways – thousands of people desperate to get into the city, and thousands desperate to leave.

At both ends they milled in crowds, either weighed down with luggage or carrying just a few possessions. Some had thrown their belongings on to battered trucks, others were riding on donkey-drawn carts. There were few faces that were not etched with anxiety or fear. "People are leaving because they want to see their families. They are afraid," said Kadhim Johad, 40, a teacher, as he made his way out of the city.

The British Army had set up roadblocks on either side of the Shatt Al Basra, the dirty green canal that skirts the south-western edge of Iraq's second city. They were looking for young Iraqi men of fighting age. Anyone who looked like he might be persuaded to pick up a rifle and fight was not going anywhere.

"We are not trying to disrupt normal life," said Lieutenant Angus Watson, an officer with the Black Watch, who was sitting on top of an armoured vehicle yesterday morning at the road-block, checking people going in. "But our concern is that if we let young men into the city they could be coerced into fighting." Some way behind him – towards the dense, black smoke that appeared to be pouring from the centre of the city or from a nearby oil well – the occasional rattle of gunfire and boom of artillery could be heard.

All around was the detritus of battle – burned out Iraqi armour along the edge of the road, shiny, spent cartridge shells scattered across the asphalt.

Earlier, allied forces had dropped two bombs on a building where a meeting of 200 members of the Baath party was supposedly taking place. A pair of F-15E Strike Eagles fired laser-guided munitions fitted with delayed fuses – meaning they penetrated the two-storey building before detonating, to minimise the effect of the blast on the building's surroundings. Official statements did not say how Anglo-American forces knew about the meeting, and it was not clear whether there were casualties.

About 800 yards beyond the bridge was the front line for the British forces, or at least the line of containment. The British and Americans say they have no plans to take the city of Basra, despite reports that there has been a popular uprising that was put down by forces loyal to Saddam Hussein. Instead they are desperate to gain some control over a situation that is still very unstable – an objective they were only partially achieving yesterday.

Certainly they were preventing most of the young men entering Basra: they were also stopping and checking all the young men leaving the city. Several soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards said they had stopped many young men in civilian clothes and discovered they were carrying their Iraqi army fatigues in plastic bags.

Those believed to be senior officers were being led away to a wrecked compound taken over by British soldiers. The Independent on Sunday watched as a group of around five or six men were marched into the compound in a line with green canvas bags pulled over their heads, one arm on the shoulder of the man in front. Inquiries as to what was going on in the compound, and why soldiers needed to put bags over the heads of their prisoners, were not warmly greeted by the Scottish soldier on guard at the gate.

Captain James Moulton, whose arm-oured vehicle marked the closest the British troops were going to the city, was a lot friendlier as he explained how his men had come under fire yesterday morning from buildings 400 yards away. He could not tell whether the fire was from regular soldiers or some other unit – perhaps the Fedayeen militia, said to be fanatically loyal to President Saddam.

"Look at those two men on the back of that truck," he said, nodding towardsthe road. "They're probably deserters." But while the troops were effective at establishing the checkpoint, they were less effective at communicating their wishes to local people – leaving them angry and confused, their truckloads of tomatoes and goods sitting beneath the hot sun as they tried to force their way through.

"Why are the British soldiers treating me like this?" asked a young man called Adnan. He said he was a petro-chemical engineer, and could not understand why he could not return to Basra. He had not been home for seven days and had not been able to contact his family. "We need liberty, not invasion," he said. "I don't know what is going on."

The problem of communication is one of the most basic that British and US forces are encountering. Few units have translators, and phrase cards have been given out – about one for every four troops. Lt Moulton was happy to show his Easy Guide to Arabic for Soldiers at Roadblocks – or whatever it was called. It reveals the kind of things a soldier might need to communicate to people whose country he is invading. Qan-nass is, apparently, Arabic for sniper.