OUTSIDE BASRA, March 25: British forces outside Basra said a violent uprising against the Baghdad government had erupted on Tuesday and that Iraqi troops opened fire to put down the revolt.

“There has been a civilian uprising in the north of Basra. We have seen a large crowd on the streets. The Iraqis are firing their own artillery at their own people. There will be carnage,” one British official said.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al Sahhaf denied the report in a statement to Al Jazeera television.

But British intelligence reports said thousands of people were rampaging through parts of the city known to be populated by supporters of President Saddam Hussein. They said Iraqi artillery had opened fire on the rebels.

Dozens of buildings were said to be in flames in the city.

“I categorically deny these provocative lies the Americans are trying to spread through CNN,” Mr Sahhaf told Al Jazeera.

“These are lies issued by the US administration and British government ... with the aim of demoralizing” the Iraqi population, he said.

Undercover British intelligence officials were said to have been working inside the city of 1.5 million people for weeks in a bid to engineer the unrest.

The main Shia Iraqi opposition group, based in Iran, also said the revolt was under way.

“A revolt is taking place in Basra,” Mohammad Hadi, spokesman for the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq said in Tehran.

Earlier, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld discourgaged residents of Basra on Tuesday from rising up against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, suggesting that US and British forces were not in a position to help them against pro-regime gunmen in the city.

“I guess those of us my age remember uprising in Eastern Europe in the mid 1950s when they rose up and they were slaughtered,” he said.

“I am very careful about encouraging people to rise up. We know there are people in those cities ready to shoot them if they try to rise up, we know there are people in that city who will kill them if they try to leave,” he said. His comments came amid reports that Iraqi protesters in the city came under mortar fire from forces loyal to Baghdad.—AFP