An AFP correspondent on the site saw the British forces distributing water from five tankers to scores of Az-Zubayr residents who gathered to collect their share.

Major Jason Willows told AFP that 112,000 liters (29,590 gallons) of water were distributed Wednesday, the second day of the operation to provide water brought from Umm Qasr, 24 kilometers (15 miles) further south, which itself is receiving water through a pipe from across the border in Kuwait.

The troops would continue to distribute water to the 50,000 or so residents of the town, said Willows, in charge of the operation.

At a field clinic set up near the water tankers, a British doctor aided by nine assistants was treating residents, mostly children.

The doctor, who gave his name as Lieutenant Colonel Jones, said most of the children had worms in their intestines because they had drunk contaminated water. When their parents were advised to boil the water before giving it to their children, some said they did not have stoves, he said.

Jones was also seen tending to a 50-year-old man, Abdul Jabbar Ali, a former soldier who has been suffering from facial burns since the 1991 Gulf War.

US and British forces that launched the war on March 20 have pushed through southern Iraq as they advance toward Baghdad with the aim of toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

WAR.WIRE