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• Ambushed U.S. Soldiers' Tale of Survival • Desert Hospital Treats Wounded In the Field • Anti-Tank Missile May Give Iraq Extra Punch

— By David Fox

NEAR BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi forces fired mortar bombs near some 1,000 civilians waiting to cross a bridge leading out of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, seriously hurting one woman, a British officer said on Friday.

No-one was believed to have died in the attack, but one young woman was seriously wounded and several others injured, Captain Robert Sandford with the 7th Armored Brigade told Reuters near Basra.

"It would seem there are several small groups of Iraqi militia using mortar plates on the back of small, mobile vehicles. They landed around eight or nine mortars near the group (of civilians)," he told Reuters.

Sandford said British forces could not return fire immediately because it was hard to locate the attackers.

British tanks were positioned near the bridge and it was impossible to say what was the target of the Iraqi attack, which took place at around 10 a.m. local time (2 a.m. EST) on Friday.

British military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ronnie McCourt at war headquarters in Qatar said Iraqi paramilitaries targeted 2,000 civilians trying to flee Iraq's second city. It was not immediately clear if he was talking about the same incident.

"A couple of thousand Iraqi civilians trying to get out of Basra to the north and west are being fired on by paramilitaries with both mortars and machineguns," he said, adding that British forces there were trying to help evacuate casualties.

A steady flow of people were trying to leave the besieged city, but it was not a massive outflow. For every two people trying to leave, one was looking to get back in.

SHI'ITE STRONGHOLD

British military intelligence reported earlier this week that Basra's mainly Shi'ite population may have started an uprising against the ruling Baath Party, but officials later played down the report of revolt, speaking instead of unrest.

The city is surrounded by a virtual ring of U.S. and British tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers and the United Nations has expressed alarm at a humanitarian crisis in Basra, which has been short of water and power for days.

Red Cross officials said on Thursday they had partially restored water, but residents said it was still hard to find.

U.S.-led forces had been hoping the Shi'ite south would welcome them as liberators after decades of discrimination and persecution by President Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government.

In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, Shi'ites rose against Saddam, expecting support from the international forces which ended Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. But that support never came and Saddam brutally crushed the uprising.

Islam is divided between the dominant Sunni sect and Shi'ism. In Iraq, the situation is reversed with Shi'ites accounting for an estimated 60 percent of the population.

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