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  The battle for Basra May 11, 2003 Reporter :Jane Corbin Producer : Fiona Campbell  The real battle for Basra — to ensure security and foster a government that Iraqis trust — is still being waged on the streets. And, as Panorama's Jane Corbin discovered, the British army may well be in for a long stay.Basra is Iraq's second city, home to nearly a million-and-a-half people — mostly Shiah Muslims. Saddam hated Basra and its people after they dared to defy him by rising up after the Gulf War 12 years ago. Saddam starved the city of funding and brutally repressed its citizens. Tens of thousands of prisoners, targetted for their political and religious beliefs, were jailed by the regime during its two-and-a-half decades in power. Many of them never emerged again. Evidence of torture was discovered in the city's prison — iron rings in the floor hinting at shackles, hooks in the ceiling hinting at worse. Major Lindsay MacDuff showed Corbin the cells beneath an anonymous-looking block targetted by coalition bombers.  Outside the Security Headquarters, a crowd grew — it was the first time ordinary Basrians had been allowed inside this forbidden compound. Rumours quickly spread that friends and relatives were still holed-up underground. The crowd wanted the British to excavate the site. At least 5000 men from the city had disappeared into Saddam's prisons in the past decade alone. One resident told the BBC, "My brother was taken. They brought him here and ... me and my mother and my wife, my father, my brothers were taken to another prison."The war in Basra pitted British troops against a regime prepared to hold its own people hostage in order to survive. Corbin found the home of the man who came to symbolise the regime's brutality in Basra, Saddam's cousin, the military governor of Southern Iraq. This once-palatial mansion had belonged to Al Hassan al-Majid, nicknamed "Chemical Ali". Homeless families now occupy al-Majid's house. They too suffered at the hands of Saddam and his cousin. Just before the British invaded Basra, they camped in the desert outside the city, hoping that having troops surrounding it would encourage Iraqis to topple the regime. There was an attempt at revolt. A crowd set fire to a government building but the rebellion was crushed when seven policemen who refused to fire on their own people were executed.  British hopes were dashed … they would now have to destroy Saddam's regime without wrecking Basra. After receiving intelligence that dozens of members of Saddam's Ba'ath Party would be meeting in the party headquarters, American planes armed with bunker-busting munitions were scrambled overhead. Two hundred people were killed in the bombing, but it was soon clear that Chemical Ali had escaped. On another occasion late one afternoon, al-Majid and key aides were reportedly expected at a private villa in the city. It was next door to the house where a prominent Basra doctor, Abel Hassan Hamooudi, and his family had been holed-up for weeks. Coalition planners received word that al-Majid had arrived at the house and taken a sleeping pill — he'd be there for the night. It took hours to get permission for a bombing raid on a residential street in Basra. But the coalition hit the wrong house. Dr Hamooudi explains what happened when the bombs hit the house the family was staying in, "All the bricks, though reinforced concrete, fell on the family and a heap of dust about one metre high. They were all there. What I did, I managed luckily to save the life of my daughter with her two sons, four years and six months. The third one was killed with his grandmum. I managed to remove the bricks from them because I heard a noise — 'ba, ba, ba' — which means, 'dad, dad, dad'." Ten members of the family from three generations died that night. The family was devastated. Brigadier Graham Binns, Commander of the 7th Cavalry Armoured Brigade, said he understood the family's anger. But he said they had very precise intelligence of a meeting of all the senior Ba'ath Party figures in a house. "It took us seven hours to come to the decision to attack it," said Brigadier Binns. "We re-checked and checked, checked and re-checked the intelligence. We're very careful with the type of munitions that were delivered, and we hit the target ... as a result of that attack, I acknowledged that one prominent doctor lost 10 members of his family."  Despite the Brigadier being certain that Chemical Ali was in the house, there is doubt about whether this attempt to kill him succeeded. Just this week, there were witnesses who claim to have seen him in southern Iraq. And Binns himself told Jane Corbin, "Chemical Ali's rather like Elvis. Nobody is quite sure whether he's dead or alive, and every day we get five ... at least five ... reports of his current location."The war is over and the people are venturing out on the streets again, but they face an uncertain future. The Coalition had a battle plan, but no blueprint for a post-Saddam Iraq. Basra was without water, electricity and fuel. And just this week, there has been a suspected outbreak of cholera in the city, with at least 17 cases reported and the World Health Organisation warning there could be hundreds more. Despite the British military help, many Iraqis have not been able to access clean drinking water, and have become ill as a result. The breakdown of law and order in Basra is likely to last some time. It risks getting British troops bogged down in peacekeeping duties in the city. The commander of the 7th Armoured Brigade has established himself in Saddam's summer palace, a huge and ornate complex in a city of poverty and squalor. The brigadier's meetings are now increasingly concerned with preventing any extremist Shia or tribal faction from taking over the city. The British army still has no answer to the question of how to rid Basra of the Ba'ath Party's grip. Many competent people had some affiliation with Saddam Hussein's party in the past. In Basra's port, the wreck of Saddam's official presidential yacht lies rusting, battered by the Coalition's bombs.  So there's still no clean drinking water and no local leadership, just the British army who hope they'll only be temporary custodians of Basra. Jane Corbin asked one of the locals, Imad Hassan, how people felt about British troops on their streets. Hassan replied, "Well, I will tell you something. People have in-fighted against the English troops, and there is nothing happening now, but if these things continue, I mean without water, without food, without medicine, without schools, no … the people will not stay still, they will fight."The symbols of the old regime lie broken, but there is no sense yet of what will replace them. The Hamooudi family still wait to bury their dead at a shrine north of Basra. The roads are not yet safe to travel there. Meanwhile, they are trying to repair their shattered home. They have written to Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British Ministry of Defence demanding compensation for the 10 relatives who were killed. Nothing will replace their loss but they feel it is their right. Corbin asked Dina Hamooudi what her family would do now. She answered honestly, and poignantly, "Nothing, just crying. We don't have anything to do, just crying, do just nothing." For more information on this story, please click on to this BBC Panorama program website. 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