Britain said on Sunday that a Royal Air Force plane appeared to have been shot down by a U.S. missile near Iraq's border with Kuwait, taking to three the number of alleged aircraft accidents since the war started. Fourteen British soldiers and five Americans died in two helicopter accidents the two previous days. Patriot missile launchers are designed to provide air defense, shooting down everything from ballistic missiles to low-flying cruise missiles.

Fighting Near Shi'ite Holy City on Road to Baghdad

Iraqi troops fought U.S. advance units overnight near the central Shi'ite holy city of Najaf as an armored American advance moved closer to the capital Baghdad and President Saddam Hussein's power base.

Iraqi troops 45 miles southeast of Najaf held up the U.S. advance overnight.

At the southern tip of Iraq, a firefight between U.S. and Iraqi forces broke out on Sunday in the town of Umm Qasr, one day after U.S. officials said they had taken control of the strategic port there.

Inland, U.S. officers said there was heavier fighting barring the way north, close to Najaf itself, which is just 100 miles south of the capital.

The Iraqi authorities also reported a battle in the desert near Najaf, an important religious center for the Shi'ite Muslim majority on the western bank of the Euphrates River.

Some U.S. advance columns have covered about two thirds of the 300 miles to Baghdad in two days since they and their British allies poured over the Kuwaiti border in an invasion to oust Saddam.

Najaf is the closest major ground fighting has come to the capital, which suffered another night of bombing, though nothing like the pounding it took the previous night.

Baghdad suffered fresh air raids on Sunday morning that made the earth shake. Iraq says three civilians have been killed in bombing so far, and scores wounded.

Air raid on the northern city of Mosul were also reported. A correspondent for the al-Jazeera Arabic television network in Mosul said explosions had been heard before dawn west of the city near the border with Syria.

Iraq said in a broadcast statement that U.S. forces had fled after a desert clash near the city. The local leader of Saddam's Baath party was killed in the fighting, it added.

U.S. commanders believe the Medina Division of Saddam's Republican Guard, better equipped than the regular army, is holding Najaf.

Further south, the U.S. military said it had secured a bridge across the Euphrates at the city of Nassiriya, 235 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Iraq's information minister said on Sunday that its forces were still putting up resistance around Nassiriya.

U.S. and British officials declined to say whether their forces had taken control of Basra, Iraq's second city in the far south, after a U.S. officer reported winning a battle on the outskirts on Saturday, taking many prisoners.

But al-Jazeera, quoting Iraqi medics, said 50 people were killed when U.S. F-16 planes bombed near Basra.

Raw video footage, beamed across the Arab world by the Qatar-based satellite channel, showed a child with half its head blown off.

Iraqi Minister Says 77 Civilians Killed in Basra

Iraq's information minister said on Sunday that U.S. and British forces seeking to seize the southern city of Basra had killed 77 civilians, most of them with cluster bombs.

Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said told a news conference that a total of 366 people had been injured in Basra, where U.S. and British forces have reported encountering resistance.

"Did you see what those criminals did in Basra when they used the cluster bombs? Seventy-seven people were martyred and 366 were injured from these banned weapons," Sahaf said.

PHOTO CAPTION

An American made Patriot missile launcher of the Kuwait Air Force, used to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, is deployed in an undated file photograph. A U.S. Patriot missile battery may have engaged a British Royal Air Force aircraft near the Kuwaiti border. (Reuters - Handout)