Shiite Muslims Iraq

Almost every night, Iraqi refugees near this shattered port city on the southern frontier of Iraq report the sound of gunfire between the border and Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. "The Iraqi resistance fighters are attacking Saddam Hussein's troops," said Abu Taisier, a 29-year-old Iraqi mullah who comes from the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf. "Our men are active and have forced the Iraqis to shut down the main road between Basra and Amarah to the north at 5 o'clock in the afternoon."

Anticipating a U.S. announcement of a "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq, President Saddam Hussein has ordered the rapid withdrawal of all fixed-wing Iraqi warplanes deployed below the 32nd Parallel in his country, Administration sources said Monday. The operation, launched over the weekend, coincided with military attacks by both Iraqi ground troops and helicopter gunships against Shiite Muslim rebel positions in the southern marshlands, the sources said.

It may be the world's only air-conditioned refugee camp. Then again, the 21,000 Iraqis who revolted against Saddam Hussein, then fled his wrath, are likely to be in desert limbo indefinitely. The refugees were relocated three weeks ago to this two-square-kilometer camp in a remote area near the Iraqi border, more than 450 miles from Riyadh. Many said Tuesday they will not return to Iraq while Hussein still rules.

Thousands of refugees fled worsening violence in southern Iraq on Tuesday as Republican Guard tank and infantry brigades loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein blasted their way into rebellious districts of Basra, the country's second-largest city. As the regime began its counterattack in the widespread, three-day-old popular revolt--sparked by its bitter defeat in Kuwait at the hands of the U.S.

Saddam Hussein's loyalist forces have effectively crushed a three-week-old armed rebellion in southern Iraq, according to Iraqi soldiers who arrived in the American zone Sunday. The soldiers were the lastest of scores who are again surrendering to U.S. forces deployed in the desert here.

The State Department denounced the Iraqi government Friday for continued human rights violations in its efforts to drive Shiite Muslims from their ancestral home in the country's southeastern marshlands. "We have verified extensive draining and burning of the marshes, the burning of villages, and ongoing artillery attacks on civilian centers," the department said in a statement.

President Bush announced Wednesday that allied warplanes will assert control of the skies over southern Iraq, a gesture designed to break Baghdad's repressive control over the Shiite Muslim-dominated region and to signal to Iraqi dissidents that the West continues to seek the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The White House said Tuesday that the belated U.N. inspection of Iraq's Agriculture Ministry has defused an immediate confrontation with Baghdad, but senior officials said specific planning has begun for what they described as an all but inevitable clash in the future. With Saddam Hussein's armed suppression of Shiite Muslim populations now seen as one likely flash point, officials are reviewing proposals for a possible U.S.

The wind slicing across the top of the reeds sends an uneasy murmur through the hot afternoon. Half a mile away, clouds of smoke from the morning's artillery barrage feed a gray pall that hangs low over the marsh. A long canoe makes its way along a narrow sliver of water, gliding between impenetrable walls of green reeds. Suddenly, behind one of the reed walls, those in the canoe can see a flash of white and hear the shuffling of feet.

Rebelling civilians have emptied political prisons and executed loyalists of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in a popular fundamentalist Islamic uprising that has spread anarchy across southern Iraq in the last four days, according to refugees who reached here Monday. Foes of the Iraqi president have taken control of seven major cities south of Baghdad in a growing threat to Iraq's dictatorial regime, the refugees said.