US missile may have shot down UK plane

10.00pm

UPDATED REPORT - Britain says a Royal Air Force plane that went missing in the Gulf today was likely shot down by a US Patriot missile in the first known "friendly fire" incident of the Iraq war.

"It appears the RAF aircraft was engaged by a Patriot missile near the Kuwaiti border. The crew are missing. I can't confirm the type of aircraft or the number of crew," said a spokesman for Britain's Defence Ministry.

A US spokesman said a Patriot missile battery may have engaged the aircraft, which was returning from a mission on day four of the Iraq war.

"This is the first friendly fire incident (of this war)," a British defence spokeswoman told Reuters.

Patriots are designed to down enemy missiles and the mistaken firing on a coalition plane is a blow for allied morale as it faces resistance from Iraqi forces on the ground.

"This is a tragedy," Group Captain Al Lockwood told BBC television. "We are doing everything we can do to find out the rationale behind the problem."

It was Britain's third air tragedy of the conflict and underscored the perils of waging round-the-clock strikes on Iraq, which has been pounded by bombs and missiles.

Prime Minister Tony Blair - who has for the first time won majority backing for war from the British public - has committed 45,000 troops to help the United States oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in a major air and ground war.

Britain has since lost 14 troops in two helicopter crashes.

A US Sea Knight helicopter crashed in Kuwait on Friday, killing eight British soldiers and four US Marines.

On Saturday, two Royal Navy helicopters from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal - Britain's flagship in the war - collided in mid-air, killing six Britons and one American.

"We have sadly witnessed the sacrifices our forces are ready to make for our safety and security," Blair wrote in the People newspaper before the latest air loss. "And we have to be ready for more sadness and setbacks ahead."

In the 1991 Gulf War to drive invading Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, nine British troops were killed accidently by allies so-called "friendly fire".

The accident will figure at a war cabinet due to be held later on Sunday, when Blair will discuss the war's progress with his top ministers.

Blair's decision to go to war without UN blessing has divided Britain and confronted him with by far the most serious and sustained opposition of his six-year premiership.

But with war now underway, the public is finally rallying behind US President George W Bush and his top ally Blair, who has staked his political career on the Iraq crisis.

Two newspaper polls on Sunday showed the British public appeared to have softened its previous strong opposition to the Iraq war.

An ICM poll for the News of the World showed 56 per cent believed Blair's handling of the crisis had been "about right".

The paper said support two weeks ago was just 29 per cent.

In the Sunday Times, a YouGov poll showed 56 per cent now thought the United States and Britain were right to take military action, with 36 per cent opposed.

In the previous YouGov poll before the war, the figures were almost exactly the reverse.

Nearly a quarter-of-a-million demonstrators marched for peace in the streets of London on Saturday, but the numbers were well down on a million-strong protest staged before war began.

Several thousand also gathered outside Fairford air base in western England where American B-52 bombers have been taking off to attack Baghdad. In the latest attack, the giant aircraft left the base under cover of darkness on Sunday; within hours, bombs rained down anew on Baghdad and Saddam's home town of Tikrit.

Journalists were also under fire in the field, with three ITN journalists disappearing after their car came under fire near Basra.

The television network said it was becoming increasingly concerned for the safety of its reporter Terry Lloyd, 51, editor Fred Nerac and local translator Hussein Othman.

One crew member who escaped said the firing was coming from the direction of British forces' positions and in London the Defence Ministry said they could have been caught in crossfire.

Fresh air raids shook Baghdad on Sunday as a US armoured column pushed more than half-way to the Iraqi capital, part of a ferocious onslaught aimed at ousting President Saddam Hussein.

But advance US units faced Iraqi resistance on the road to the central Shi'ite holy city of Najaf.

Reuters reporter Adrian Croft said a firefight erupted in the southern town of Umm Qasr today, one day after US officials said they had won control of the strategic port there.

"There's a serious firefight going on here now," Croft said. "There is a hell of a lot of machine-gun fire going on."

In central Iraq, ground forces invading from Kuwait approached Najaf, just 160km south of Baghdad.

Further south near Nassiriya, some troops crossed the Euphrates river from the western desert to the fertile and more populous Mesopotamian plain.

At a rear base in Kuwait, one American soldier was killed and 12 wounded when grenades were thrown into a command tent. The military said one of its own men was held as a suspect.

Mosul, in northern Iraq where a planned second invasion front has been thwarted by Turkey's reluctance to act as a conduit, also came under attack from the air.

US forces said they had defeated Iraqi troops on the outskirts of the southern oil city of Basra, one of the first targets of the ground invasion, and captured the riverside town of Nassiriya 375km southeast of Baghdad.

Some advance columns have now covered about two thirds of the 500km to Baghdad in two days since pouring over the Kuwaiti border. US Marines said they took control of bridgeheads across the Euphrates river.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said on television that defenders were still fighting US forces around Nassiriya and had destroyed 16 US tanks and armoured vehicles.

A string of explosions rocked Baghdad on Sunday, including one massive blast that shook the ground in the centre of the city, Reuters witnesses said. Power was briefly knocked out.

Iraqi forces set oil-filled trenches ablaze around the capital in an apparent bid to create a smokescreen. Some of the weekend raids were not met with anti-aircraft fire.

Iraqi officials say three people have been killed and about 250 wounded in Baghdad since the war erupted. The International Committee of the Red Cross said its workers had seen about 200 people described as war-wounded in Baghdad hospitals.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov vowed Moscow, along with Paris and Berlin a strong opponent of the war, would block any future moves by the United States and its allies to win UN blessing for the military action against Iraq and the post-war power structures they might set up there.

Regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia urged the United States and Iraq to halt what it termed an illegitimate war that risked igniting further Arab fury. Syria demanded an immediate end to what it called the "barbaric aggression".

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq