UK marines finally calm the vital port that proved so resistant

If Saddam Hussein was pleased to see us you would not have known it. On the colourful mosaic image of the Iraqi leader that stood at the entrance to Umm Qasr, the tile which would have displayed his mouth and well-groomed moustache was missing. Whether it had been deliberately vandalised no one seemed to know.

But if President Saddam was smiling as the Royal Marines transported a group of journalists to the Iraqi port yesterday afternoon, he was about the only person who was.

"Welcome to Iraq," cried a demented-looking man, as our truck rolled past the razor wire and across the international border, while another bedraggled man scuttled up, his outstretched hands asking for food.

Welcome to Iraq indeed. Umm Qasr was cold, grey, rain-soaked and filthy. Litter and polythene bags blew across the streets, while hungry-looking dogs nosed through decrepit buildings and gathered on concrete wastelands.

Those impoverished locals who bothered to come out of their broken-down homes stood on the corners of the streets in their cheap clothes and stared. Who could tell what emotions their faces bore – fear, resentment, curiosity, anger? Certainly there appeared to be little delight at the presence of foreign troops.

Umm Qasr is a tiny town, no more than a mile from the border with Kuwait, a scruffy, grit-in-the-eye sort of place you would have thought no one in the world would have bothered putting up even a half-hearted fight for. But to the Allied forces pushing towards Baghdad, it is one of the most strategically important towns in Iraq.

It is, in effect, Iraq's only port and the only deep-water entry for ships carrying military equipment and humanitarian supplies, essential, respectively, for the success of this military campaign and to ensure hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose food supply has been disrupted by this invasion do not starve to death.

Which is why the Allied forces have been so desperate to take control of the town and why Iraqi troops put up such a surprisingly tough and bitter struggle here, their guerrilla tactics and sniper fire holding up the US Marines for four days after America's Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, declared the town was in Allied control.

In the end, Royal Marines of 42 Commando, hardened in Northern Ireland to urban warfare, were sent in to do the job. Yesterday they were patrolling the streets and dockyards of Umm Qasr, bristling with machine-guns and making no effort to hide their disdain for the US Marines who had failed to clean out the town.

"They were completely stupid," one officer, his comments liberally seasoned with four-letter words, said. "They just stood back and sent in artillery from a mile away. They didn't bother to clear the place."

That is what the Marines have been doing, making the town safe, they say, in less than 12 hours. That being said, journalists were not taken to the part of town where resistance had been stiffest and there was a suspicion it would not have been entirely safe.

In the green, greasy-with-oil waters off Umm Qasr, Allied divers and patrol boats have been searching for mines. Many have been cleared and the US Navy now plans to use Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins to drop electronic locators beside mines which can be found by bomb disposal teams.

"The dolphins are flown in from the US in an Army transporter plane, all in fleece-lined slings with an amount of water," US Naval Commander Mike Tillotson said. Eight of the dolphins are coming from a San Diego naval base.

Standing amid the grey, hulking cranes of a dockyard, lashed by rain, it seemed a surreal conversation as Commander Tillotson talked of Flipper and his friends from the US Navy's marine mammal programme arriving from sunny California to clear the seabed.

On the dockside lay two cheap suitcases, broken and crushed, their meagre contents spilt on the floor, a few items of clothing, a pair of jeans and scattered papers.

Nearby lay green military fatigues, left there, a marine said, by Iraqi soldiers who were changing in and out of uniform in an attempt to confuse Allied soldiers.

"There was one officer we discovered up on the Al-Faw peninsula who was just in his knickers," Sgt Gareth Hurst, from Exeter, said. "He claimed he was a civilian."

But taking prisoners and clearing houses are not the only challenges facing Allied forces in Umm Qasr. Somehow they have to persuade the civilian population they are not here to hurt them but to help, that there is a chance their presence here will do some good rather than bad.

The marines were keen to emphasise that, posing for photographs demanded by the journalists as they handed sweets to children and fed military rations chocolate to stray puppies.

But they also seemed to know this is not enough, that it is not sufficient simply to teach a skinny child in sandals to take sweets from strangers.

"We have to do the hearts and minds thing," Lieutenant-Colonel Ben Currie said. He said his units have been provided with specially trained "interface teams", communicating with the local population. Civilians are also being employed as translators. They are happy to work for 50 cents a day, he said.

We left the way we had come in, through the main gates of the town, back towards the border with Kuwait. The man who welcomed us to Iraq had gone.

WAR OF WORDS

THURSDAY 20 MARCH

Overnight: US Marines travel overland and British Royal Marines stage amphibious landings on the Al-Faw peninsula and head for Umm Qasr, Iraq's largest sea port. Kuwait news agency reports suggest, erroneously, that the port has been captured.

FRIDAY 21 MARCH

AM: Marines enter town and new port, initially meeting little resistance; about 200 Iraqis surrender.

PM: US Marines raise Stars and Stripes, which is soon lowered.

Evening: Sporadic fighting continues. A US Marine is killed by sniper fire. US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, decrees Umm Qasr "secure".

SATURDAY 22 MARCH

The old port is taken and troops have moved to the newer installation one mile away, military leaders insist. Troops come under sniper fire. British commanders say "little pockets of resistance from guerrilla fighters'' remain.

SUNDAY 23 MARCH

AM: US Marines attacked, initially by snipers, then from machine-guns and grenades. Unit of Republican Guard, later thought to be up to 100-strong, located in warehouse on edge of port area. Troops call in tank and helicopter support. Fierce fighting breaks out.

PM: RAF Harrier jets bomb Iraqis who later launch artillery attacks. Fighting continues into evening and night.

MONDAY 24 MARCH

By dawn, the Iraqis are subdued and fighting stops. US Marines depart and British Marines conduct house-to-house searches and "mopping up" operations.

TUESDAY 25 MARCH

Umm Qasr declared open and secure.