Two British soldiers lie dead on a Basra roadway, a small Iraqi girl — victim of a US/UK airstrike — is brought to hospital with her intestines spilling our of her stomach, a terribly wounded woman screams in agony as doctors try to take off her black dress. An Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq’s second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited Al-Djazaira videotape — filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad — is raw, painful, devastating.
It is also proof that Basra — reportedly “captured’’ and “secured’’ by British troops last week — is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s forces.
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