Striking before dawn, British tanks and infantry staged a lightning raid into besieged Basra on Saturday, destroying five Iraqi tanks and blowing up two statues of Saddam Hussein before withdrawing without casualties.

The strike was the first thrust into the city confirmed by British officers, and it and other limited attacks around Basra could be a preview of how coalition commanders might deal with a siege of Baghdad.

The move also was further evidence that British troops fighting for control of Iraq far south are not here just as window dressing in the war to topple Saddam. The British soldiers and marines in the field have pedigrees that stretch to El Alamein, Waterloo and earlier and aren't taking a back seat to an American ground force about five times larger.

British troops have fought some of the toughest battles so far, mixing up pinpoint raids in urban areas with the pummeling of Iraqi armored forces daring or desperate enough to risk a head-on fight in the open.

"A war-fighting army does not go along adding up how many people it kills," Vernon said. "It kills them, it buries them, and it takes prisoners of war."

AP