Hussein Forces Counterattack in Basra; Many Flee Fighting : Uprising: Sources say the Republican Guard has retaken much of the port. But half a dozen other cities reportedly remain under opposition control.

SAFWAN, Iraq — Thousands of refugees fled worsening violence in southern Iraq on Tuesday as Republican Guard tank and infantry brigades loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein blasted their way into rebellious districts of Basra, the country’s second-largest city.

As the regime began its counterattack in the widespread, three-day-old popular revolt--sparked by its bitter defeat in Kuwait at the hands of the U.S.-led military coalition--tanks belonging to the two opposing factions were still squared off on many of Basra’s street corners, Iraqi opposition leaders said.

They added that at least half a dozen cities remained in rebel hands throughout Iraq, including Najaf and Karbala, two sites holy to Iraq’s Shiite Muslims.

President Hussein “clearly is trying to rally the military in terms of dealing with unrest,” said a senior Bush Administration official, but the reports coming into the White House were very contradictory. “It’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on. . . . We hear on the one hand reports that the army is moving in and taking charge. Then, not long afterward, we hear that unrest is spreading.”

Reports from throughout the region, confirmed by U.S. intelligence sources, said that about 4,000 troops from the Republican Guard, which is considered the best of the Iraqi army and was created mainly to protect Hussein, had retaken most of Basra. The fighting was punctuated by heavy exchanges of machine-gun and rocket fire between the guard and its opponents--armed civilians and dissident regular army soldiers who had joined in the largely Islamic-based insurrection.

In the vacuum of direct information on the turmoil, descriptions of the clashes in Basra and at least seven other cities in southern and central Iraq--all of them with a Shiite Muslim majority--have come from refugees fleeing the strife-torn cities or from exiled Iraqi opposition leaders, most of whom have only limited organizations within Iraq.

Among other developments reported Tuesday:

* Iraqi soldiers based in the north near the Turkish border have begun moving toward Baghdad where, Pentagon officials said, their presence may enable troops already in the capital to go south to combat the spreading violence.

* U.S. military officials issued a chemical weapons alert in part of southern Iraq on Monday night after receiving unconfirmed reports that Iraqi troops may have used such weapons to quell the growing uprising.

* Iran’s former president and a former prime minister said in Paris that the regime in Tehran is fueling the fires of rebellion in southern Iraq. Hussein dispatched one of his closest aides to Tehran on Tuesday to meet with Iranian officials.

* The United States has no intention of becoming involved in the fighting, a Bush Administration spokesman said, and Pentagon officials said they believe that Hussein will be successful in suppressing the rebellion.

* Kurdish guerrillas and Iraqi army defectors Tuesday took control of Irbil, a major Kurdish city, as opposition to Hussein’s regime spread in northern Iraq, a resistance leader said in Damascus.

Basra Fighting

A U.S. military official said there had been “fierce fighting” in Basra for the past several days, and some refugees reported that the Republican Guards had moved tanks, armored personnel carriers and other heavy weaponry into the center of the city Basra.

U.S. officials said the fighting apparently started after the Iraqi regular army, outraged to see Republican Guard units firing into crowds of demonstrators, began giving its arms to the protesters and joining the battle.

“The soldiers, they took their guns to the citizens,” said a refugee from Basra, who asked not to be identified. “They were in front of the citizens (when the guard began firing). And when they died, the citizens took their guns.”

At least 3,000 loyalist soldiers representing about two armored brigades of the Republican Guard moved into Basra on Monday, said a U.S. military spokesman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Despite continuing chaos amid growing street battles, intelligence and aerial surveillance indicated that Hussein’s troops apparently were well into the process of smashing the rebellion there.

“Most violence has occurred between Republican Guard units and the regular army,” the spokesman said. “You get the sense it’s growing. . . . It’s chaotic all over the city.

“Tanks are squaring off. It is platoon versus platoon. On one street corner you will see three tanks combat-parked, and at the other end of the street a couple of tanks aiming back at them.”

But, he added, “the government is starting to get its arms around this. The one thing Saddam Hussein does best is handle situations like this.”

Troop Movements

Pentagon officials said Tuesday that at least two Iraqi brigades--including one from the Republican Guard--were moving toward Baghdad. Their arrival would free other troops in the capital for duty in as many as a dozen other cities where Shiites are reportedly setting fire to government buildings and fighting troops still loyal to President Hussein.

Hussein loyalists also are rounding up soldiers returning from Kuwait so that they can reconstitute military units to help restore order, the Pentagon said.

Rear Adm. John (Mike) McConnell, director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday that U.S. forces are receiving reports of artillery and heavy weapons being fired into buildings that are believed to shelter insurgents. American forces continue to fly reconnaissance flights over most of Iraq, and allied forces occupy parts of southern Iraq, including areas close to the strife-torn cities.

“The nation is reacting to the leadership and the suppression of Saddam Hussein,” said McConnell. “Twenty percent of the population and virtually all the important governmental positions of power in the country are controlled by a Sunni minority. So what I think is happening is a reaction to that suppression over the years.”

McConnell said that the Iraqi uprising did not appear to be organized and probably would be quashed by the Hussein loyalists, who remain more powerful than the rebels even though the Iraqi dictator’s military machine has been beaten to the ground by the allies.

“Whether Saddam Hussein can do this over time--six months, a year, more than that--that’s still open to question,” said McConnell. “But I believe (Hussein) probably will be successful in putting this down because of the lack of organization and leadership” on the part of the insurrectionists.

Nasiriyah

In Nasiriyah, forces loyal to Hussein appear to be outnumbered by the opposition, which was being supplied with arms by army regulars who were attempting to protect civilians from the Republican Guard, refugees said.

Rebels were said to be marching through the streets, chanting, “We want an Islamic government!” and “Down with Saddam!”

“We have just one thing that we wish: Saddam Hussein dead,” said refugee Hezaa Oda, a tomato farmer. “He killed our sons--eight years of war with Iran and now this Kuwaiti country. Kuwait helped us, and they (the Iraqi army) invaded Kuwait.

“I want a weapon. I want cigarettes, food . . . and a gun.”

U.S. military officials said it remained unclear which side was prevailing in the fighting, but there was no disputing the widespread chaos through much of southern Iraq.

“Civilians are attacking Baath party members and officials,” said Tawama Haili, who fled to the border from Nasiriyah on Tuesday. “There’s no kind of control. Neither the government nor the military is in charge. All the party officials are killed.”

In Tehran, Mohammed Bakr Hakim, a Shiite clergyman who leads an Iraqi opposition group from Iran, said in an interview with The Times that forces supporting the Shiite Muslims are now collaborating with Kurdish forces in the north in a military strategy to undermine Hussein.

“Before, we had a political agreement with the Kurdish groups,” Hakim said. “Now we have military coordination as well.”

Kurdish Area

Irbil, capital of Iraq’s former Kurdish autonomous region with a population of 1 million, was the scene of fighting Tuesday between the Kurds and regular army troops, Jalal Talabani, head of the rebel Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said in Damascus, Syria. He said radio reports from Kurdish guerrillas claimed that the city, 200 miles north of Baghdad, was in rebel hands at the end of the day.

Iraq’s estimated 4 million Kurds live in the northern part of the country and have long struggled against central rule from Baghdad.

Talabani said six other towns, most of them in the Irbil area, were reported in guerrilla hands. He contended that his information was up to date on the Irbil area, but he could not confirm reports of unrest in another major Kurdish city, Sulaymaniyah, southeast of Irbil.

“We think the intifada , the uprising, will spread very quickly in the next few days,” the Iraqi dissident said, borrowing a label for the unrest among Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories.

Talabani claimed that the insurrections sweeping Iraq are not ethnically based, although Shiite Muslims appear to be leading the unrest in the south and Kurds in the north. They are popular revolts against the “dictatorship of Saddam Hussein,” he said.

Chemical Weapons

U.S. military officials in Safwan said Tuesday that they issued a chemical weapons alert Monday night after a report that poison gas may have been used by both the Republican Guard and the insurrectionists in Basra.

“We have no idea whether they actually used chemicals or not,” said Staff Sgt. Ken Pfeiffer, who controls one of the U.S. Army’s northernmost checkpoints, about 25 miles south of Basra.

He said the reports came from a U.S. Army unit.

“They reported on the radio . . . to our command center,” the sergeant said. “We were told it was possible the Iraqis were using chemicals on each other.”

U.S. military units in southern Iraq went on temporary alert and set up chemical detectors, but there was no indication of poison gas as far south as Safwan, Army officials said.

Charges Against Iran

Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr said in Paris on Tuesday that the Iranian regime is stoking an Islamic fundamentalist upheaval in Iraq and that the United States would cause big problems in the Middle East if it helps the revolt.

“Iran is playing ball with the U.S.,” he told the Reuters news service. “It is fomenting trouble in Iraq.”

Bani-Sadr, who was the first head of state of the Islamic Republic established after the overthrow of the now-deceased Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979, said his information comes from sources in Iran.

The shah’s last prime minister, Shahpour Bakhtiar, who is also exiled in France, concurred with Bani-Sadr.

He told Reuters that the Western belief that Tehran is shifting away from a hard-line Islamic stance is wrong.

“There is no such thing as a moderate mullah (Islamic clergyman),” Bakhtiar said. “All they want is to spread the faith. They are not bent on taking Iraq but on taking over Islam and marching on Jerusalem.

“As a Shiite, I know Shiites do not aspire to democracy,” Bakhtiar said. “Their religion is to do with martyrdom, war. There was one good thing about the (Iraqi) Baath regime: it was a lay system. You can talk to a layman but not to a madman.”

Iranian officials have denied any role in the widespread uprising against the regime. And on Tuesday, President Hussein dispatched Sadoun Hammadi, a member of his ruling Revolutionary Command Council, to Tehran to urge that the Iranians play no part in any effort to destabilize the Iraqi government.

Hammadi, a trusted aide to Hussein, has been assigned other delicate missions, including the arrangement in Tehran allowing Iraqi warplanes to seek refuge in Iran when Iraq was under heavy allied bombardment during the recent war.

The Iraqi Opposition

Hakim, the Tehran-based Iraqi cleric who heads the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that the Iraqi regime had killed and injured many civilians in the retaking of Basra.

“Iraqi troops used tanks to attack civilian quarters at Basra, killing a number of civilians and destroying several houses,” Hakim said, adding an appeal to the world powers to intercede in behalf of the popular rebellion.

Another Iraqi opposition leader in exile, speaking at a press conference in Beirut, put the casualty toll in Basra in the thousands, adding that the city remained in rebel hands.

“When the troops loyal to the regime failed to retake Basra, they pounded the city with a hail of cannon fire,” declared Sayed Mohammed Haidari, a senior Muslim clergyman. The barrage killed “thousands of civilians, including elderly, women and children,” added Haidari, a politburo member of the Higher Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, another of the 17 often-rival political groups in a newly formed anti-Saddam alliance-in-exile.

Haidari also said rebels are gathering arms and ammunition from military barracks and from dissident Iraqi troops who had retreated from Kuwait.

Asked whether the huge allied force that remains in fixed positions in southern Iraq, just west of Basra, planned to join in the battle, the U.S. spokesman in Riyadh said: “Iraqi soldiers and civilians came to the allied line in one border incident and asked if they could have some weapons. I am sure we said no.”

Murphy reported from Safwan and Fineman from Amman, Jordan. Times staff writers Nick B. Williams Jr. in Damascus; Melissa Healy and David Lauter in Washington, and Stephen Braun and Laurie Becklund in Los Angeles contributed to this report.