Fears of an unholy alliance of rebels

The bomb attacks in Basra will confirm the worst fears of British commanders that Iraq is now facing a general insurgency which will be hard to contain.

Basra, Iraq's second city, had been relatively peaceful as most of the local Shi'ite leadership had chosen dialogue rather than confrontation with the British forces.

Elsewhere it has been different and senior British and American advisers to the coalition authority of Paul Bremer are now warning of a big rebellion. "We are looking at a well-planned and co-ordinated insurgency," a senior officer said. "There seems to be a single mind behind it, but we are not sure who it is."

Many insurgents belonged to Saddam Hussein's security services, the Special Republican Guard, the State Intelligence Service and the secret service, the Mukhabarat. British intelligence officers believe that Jordanian-born al Qaeda commander Musab al Zarqawi is also involved. Last year British advisers warned that some Saddam commanders had been planning a long guerrilla campaign.

"I thought this would happen - but on nothing like this scale," one said yesterday.

The rebels clearly aim to cause the maximum disruption in the run-up to the handover of power to Iraqis on 30 June.

The nightmare scenario is that the rebels have forged an unholy alliance between old Saddam supporters, al Qaeda groups among Sunni religious extremists and fanatical Shi'ite followers of the young cleric Moqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi army of irregulars.