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• Pockets of Resistance Line Baghdad Route • U.S. Firepower in the Persian Gulf • Have Questions About The War? E-Mail Us

— By Sinead O'Hanlon

LONDON (Reuters) - British forces scoured the Iraqi desert for two missing soldiers on Monday but said the U.S.-led war could weather setbacks hitting both the air and ground campaign.

Britons have woken every morning for the past four days to news that British troops have been killed or gone missing in Iraq. The toll of dead and missing has now reached 18, compared to 24 in the whole of the 1991 Gulf war.

"We can confirm that two soldiers are reported missing following an attack on British vehicles on southern Iraq," said a British official from Central Command in Qatar, which is directing the U.S.-led assault. "Efforts are being made to find and recover them."

Asked to comment on the run of bad luck, British spokesman Lt. Col. Ronnie McCourt told Reuters at Central Command: "War is not a neat video game -- it's for real, it's highly complex. There are high-speed-maneuver aircraft moving around. Accidents do happen...no war is risk-free."

But despite the news of yet more British casualties, junior defense minister Lewis Moonie was upbeat about the campaign.

"Things are still progressing well. They are not setbacks, they are the sad inevitability of what we are doing," he told BBC Radio. "The main line remains on course and that's what we are going to proceed with."

Asked whether he expected the war to last for weeks rather than months, Moonie responded: "I would certainly hope so."

While the advance of allied forces was being held up at a number of key cities, Moonie said he believed there was no need to put more troops and equipment into Iraq.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, facing the toughest test of his six years in power since throwing his weight behind the U.S. campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, will make a statement to MPs on Monday about the progress of the war.

Blair, all too aware of the unease at home after suffering a big parliamentary revolt and seeing massive anti-war rallies, is expected to emphasize the humanitarian effort that will follow the military campaign.

He is also expected to be quizzed in depth about the missing soldiers as well as a series of accidents which have led to the deaths of 16 British troops.

Two Royal Air Force pilots died on Sunday when their Tornado fighter jet was shot down by U.S. troops in so-called "friendly fire" as they returned to base near the Kuwaiti border.

That loss followed helicopter crashes on Friday and Saturday in which 14 British troops died and news over the weekend that veteran ITN reporter Terry Lloyd had been killed while on assignment in Iraq..

Despite the losses, a Daily Telegraph poll on Monday showed 56 percent of people thought Britain and the U.S. were right to take military action compared with 50 percent a week ago.

(Additional reporting by John Chalmers)

photo credit and caption:

A British Royal Marine from 3 Commando Brigade keeps low in the town of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, March 22, 2003. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair told British forces in a broadcast on Sunday that despite suffering casualties from 'friendly fire,' the military campaign in Iraq was proceeding according to plan. Photo by Pool/Reuters

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