"We have got five senior Iraqi officers but none of them is a general," Major Catherine Convery said here at the US-British forward command headquarters directing the war on Iraq.

The British military said Sunday that one of those captured in the fighting was a general in the regular Iraqi army.

Officers said the clash erupted when British commandos engaged a group of Iraqi paramilitaries southeast of the southern port city of Basra.

US-led coalition forces have surrounded Basra where they are targeting Iraq's ruling Baath Party, 200 of whose members were reported to have been killed in an air strike on Friday.

WAR.WIRE