Marines of the U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) Fox Company 'Raiders' ride in a five ton truck near Umm Qasr

UMM QASR, Iraq, March 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – U.S. Marines are still battling Iraqi resistance on the outskirts of the strategic southern port of Umm Qasr, an AFP correspondent on the scene reported Saturday, March 22.

Iraqi commandos are still hiding around the city putting up significant resistance, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Holmes of the U.S. Marines told AFP close to where the fighting was still going on.

U.S. Cobra helicopters are engaged in combat, firing missiles while both sides were heard launching mortar rounds.

The Iraqis have apparently placed a number of anti-tank mines around the area, the correspondent witnessed.

Holmes also said U.S. Marines found Iraqi munitions in abandoned bunkers.

A British spokesman said earlier that British forces controlled most of the strategic southern port of Umm Qasr but Iraqi troops were still putting up a fight in some areas.

"We believe our objectives have been met" in Umm Qasr, Group Captain Al Lockwood told AFP at the U.S. Central Command post in Qatar, where the war effort is being directed.

He said there is "still resistance in some parts, but the majority (of Umm Qasr) is patrolled" by British forces.

Iraq had insisted earlier Saturday its armed forces were resisting U.S. and British troops in Umm Qasr and the Fao Peninsula to the east.

Umm Qasr, located on the western side of the Fao Peninsula on a canal opening to the Gulf, had been handling vessels carrying in food and other vital necessities under the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program.

Lockwood called Umm Qasr "a big stepping stone in our humanitarian effort to bring supplies of food and medicine to the people of Iraq".

"We will sweep the channel very soon to check for mines and then we hope to open it for shipping.

"Britain also said that its and American ground forces were poised to snatch the key southern city of Basra, on the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway leading to the Gulf.

Britain Claims Thousands Of Prisoners 

U.S. and British military officials claimed taking thousands of Iraqi soldiers prisoners after an overnight battle with advancing U.S. army troops in southern Iraq.

Captain Andrew Valles, spokesman for the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, claimed  troops of Iraq's 11th Division gave up after the encounter near the Euphrates River.

"Thousands of Iraqis were forced to surrender," he alleged in statements to AFP.

U.S. forces invading Iraq have not expected much fight from Iraq's regular army, which is comprised mostly of conscripts with little reason to stay loyal to Baghdad.

Pentagon officials in Washington alleged earlier that a full Iraqi army division, which normally counts 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers, had surrendered in southern Iraq on Friday.

They said the commander and deputy commander of the 51st Mechanized Division had given themselves up to U.S. Marines at an undisclosed location while their men lay down their weapons and surrendered.

But in Baghdad, an Iraqi army spokesman refuted the allegation.

"The brave 51st division, with its valiant commander, officers and soldiers are fighting ... with utmost courage," said the spokesman on state television.

A British military spokesman, Royal Air Force Group Captain Al Lockwood, also claimed hundreds of Iraqi prisoners had been taken in fighting around the key southeastern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.

"I would say it's hundreds," he said when asked to quantify the number of Iraqi prisoners from the operation.

"It appears that we are beginning now to get a wholesale surrender of some of the larger units, which is obviously a good result," alleged in statements to reporters at the Qatar-based allied command and control center for the Iraqi campaign.

Sahaf Slams "Illusions & Lies"      

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf denied that U.S. and British troops had taken the key southern port of Umm Qasr, two air bases in the western desert or the strategic Foa peninsula and its vital oil installations.

He refuted these reports were "illusions and lies."

The Iraqi minister said Iraqi forces had destroyed five enemy tanks and inflicted casualties on the invading force.

"They failed to break our defenses in Umm Qasr. Our forces are still standing and until now the battles are fierce and we've inflicted large casualties on them," he averred.