A US general showed footage of a building which was destroyed by a coalition attack while hosting a meeting of some 200 Baath members in the Basra region.

"It was an attack against a Baath party assembly northeast of Basra yesterday (Friday) evening," Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations at US central command, told a daily briefing in Qatar.

"It had about 200 members of the Baath party in attendance."

Brooks followed the remarks with footage showing a missile or bomb dropped on the building, which appeared to be blown to smithereens.

Major General Victor Renuart told journalists it was thought that all those in attendance had been killed.

"We believe... about 200 leaders of these -- of these irregular squads, and key leaders -- we believe were destroyed last night," Renuart said.

The demonstration of coalition firepower came after the British, who are besieging Basra, said that the Baath party apparatus in the city was now their chief target.

"The targeting and eradication of the Baath party within Basra province is now our primary focus and military main effort," spokesman Colonel Chris Vernon told reporters in Kuwait City.

Vernon said a captured senior unnamed Baath party official was being interrogated while British forces had destroyed two statues believed to have been of Saddam on Saturday.

The statue of Saddam that dominated a monument park in the centre of the city was demolished in a dawn operation involving tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles.

"It is a statement about what we are here for. It is a visible symbol of regime change," said Capt. Rob Sandford of the Scots Dragoon Guards, who carried out the mission with the support of infantry from the Black Watch regiment.

The Baath party's headquarters in Basra and in the nearby town of Al-Zubayr "no longer exist" while radio and television stations had been taken out, said Vernon.

But he also said there was "no rush" for the British to take full control of the city. "It's a military operation. We will do it on our terms and on our conditions."

Thousands of civilians, most of them men, took advantage of a pause in shelling on Basra to stream past British military checkpoints and back into town.

But there were also fears that some of the men might be Iraqi soldiers in civilian clothes drifting into the city, which is still in Iraqi hands, to help reinforce its defences.

The British were carefully checking the few vehicles allowed to go into Basra for weapons and uniforms, and most people were made to leave their cars and walk the four kilometres (2.5 miles) to the city.

Several large explosions could also be heard, though they provoked no reaction from the British troops nor the Iraqi civilians beyond wary glances at the city.

"It's been relatively quiet today," said one member of Britain's Irish Guards who declined to give his name.

British forces were also treating civilian casualties who were wounded as they attempted to flee Basra in their thousands on Friday.

Iraqis came under mortar fire by Iraqi militia as they headed out over the Al-Zubayr bridge. The Black Watch regiment responded by firing at the Iraqi militias.

No word has been given on the number of civilian or Iraqi militia casualties but no British troops were hurt in the exchanges, officials have said.

After the Black Watch launched its assault, US F/A-18 fighter jets also used precision-guided weapons to bomb three Al-Samoud 2 missile launchers in a strike near Basra, the US military said.

The coalition had been hoping that Basra's mainly Shiite population would rise up against Saddam's regime, which is dominated by Sunnis in Baghdad.

But Iraqi regular army deserters claimed that Saddam loyalists were now seeking to tighten their reign on Basra, by ordering them to carry out suicide bombings on motorbikes packed with explosives.

Five deserters said they had been given a choice by members of the feared Fedayeen militia unit of carrying out the suicide attacks or being shot on the spot, they told reporters.

Four US soldiers were killed Saturday around the city of Najaf when a taxi driver set off a bomb at a roadblock. It was the first successful suicide attack of the 10-day-old US drive to topple Saddam.

WAR.WIRE