I walked, ran and crawled into central Basra on Thursday, constantly dropping to the ground because of gun battles between
Mahdi Army militiamen and the Iraqi Army and the police.
The rest of my stay in the city went like this: On Friday evening, the hotel I had somehow found open was showered with bullets, smashing glass on several floors and knocking pieces out of the stone facade. The next morning, Iraqi Interior Ministry forces in a part of the city they supposedly controlled were ambushed with heavy weapons at a hotel 50 yards from mine. On Sunday morning, after I had hired someone to drive me out of the city, an Iraqi soldier fired at our tires but missed. We did not stop.
Iraqi forces started their assault on the Shiite militias in Basra on Tuesday.
Whatever the initial goal of the operation, by the time I arrived in Basra it was a patchwork of neighborhoods that were either deserted or overrun by Mahdi fighters. There were scattered Iraqi Army and police checkpoints, but no place seemed to be truly under government control.
...
Somehow I found another driver to take me within a couple miles of the city center, which I had been told government forces controlled. When that driver would go no farther, I had to walk,
but by then I saw trucks filled with Mahdi Army members speeding through the streets wearing black masks and carrying AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.
Gun battles broke out unpredictably, so I ran or walked when it was quiet, then dropped down and sought cover when I could hear shooting. After 45 minutes or so, I came upon the Rumaila Hotel in a central neighborhood called Ashar. Amazingly, it was open, with six or seven guests inside and a couple of employees. I was so exhausted I didn’t think twice, just checked in.
The next day I moved around as much as I could.
The common observation was this: There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will ...
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