PRO-SADDAM Hussein militia in Basra are using children as young as five as human shields and threatening men with death if they do not fight for them, British troops revealed yesterday.

Sergeant David Baird, a tank commander, told Martin Bentham, a journalist with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, that he had seen at least four or five children, aged between five and eight, being grabbed by the scruff of the neck and held by Iraqi fighters as they crossed a road in front of his tank.

He said he was "sickened" by the tactic adopted by the Iraqis who moments earlier had been firing rocket-propelled grenades at him.

Sgt Baird, 32, from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, who commands a Challenger 2 tank from C Squadron of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards battle group, said he was forced to halt any retaliatory fire because of the danger of killing the children.

"They [the militia] were crossing the road to try and outflank us on the left and as they crossed, four or five of them grabbed kids by the scruff of their necks and dragged them across with them," he said. "They were using them as human shields so that I had to stop firing.

"The children were only five to eight years old. There were lots of women and children there. It was a busy crossroads, but they didn’t seem to care.

"I am married with a son of nine months and I just felt disgusted. In this part of the world, it seems that life is not held in the same way as we regard it. It was terrible."

The incident happened during a battle on Sunday fought by Royal Marines and tanks from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards to the south of Basra which resulted in the capture of two Iraqi villages.

British forces are learning of the desperate situation inside Basra from the hundreds of civilians fleeing the city.

Young men told how the ruling Baath Party militia has rounded up an entire generation of male residents in the city and ordered them to fight the British and Americans. Anyone refusing is shot. Two men in their 30s, who escaped and asked for asylum, told how they fled because they feared their families would be killed if they were found hiding in their homes.

Captain Ken Jolley, a British Army officer, said the two men had begged to speak to military officials at a vehicle checkpoint on a road out of the city. "The government is trying to round up all able-bodied males to fight with weapons," he says they told him. "Anyone not doing it is being executed."

He said the men were two of several giving information to the army in return for food, water or protection from their own leaders. They were taken away to be interviewed. British Army officers said that they would probably be treated as displaced persons.

British military officials have suspected for several days that Iraqi fighters were being coerced into war, either by bribery or death threats against them and their families. But Abdul-Baqi Saadoun, the second-highest ranking Baath Party official in the region, claimed at the weekend that "holy warriors are rushing to die or be martyred".

Stories of atrocities are also starting to emerge. One mother told British medics that her 12-year-old son was among dozens of children gunned down by death squads. He was shot in the liver and several times in the stomach in Az Zubayr, just outside Basra, and was being treated aboard the British hospital ship, RFA Argus.

Lieutenant Commander Nigel Bassett, the ship’s interpreter, said: "His mother says he was definitely shot by Iraqis and there were another group of children in the same place who were all gunned down by Iraqis.

"It seems there was an area of the town where people were leaving or going to get food to assist the coalition and there was a group of tearaways who came in and started indiscriminately shooting, trying to teach people not to co-operate."

A correspondent for al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel, reported that schools and administrative offices in Basra were closed yesterday, by order of the Iraqis, to avoid mounting civilian casualties caused by the fighting.

Tamara Rafai, a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross, in Kuwait, said medical supplies in Basra were beginning to run low and fresh stocks were urgently needed.

Ms Rafai said everyone in the city now had access to at least some clean water at some point during the day. But she warned: "We are very concerned. Our teams are visiting hospitals where the injured and dead have been taken and they need medical and surgical materials - urgently. The hospitals are dealing with more wounded people, a lot of people every day, a lot of civilians."

Meanwhile, the 7th Armoured Brigade - the Desert Rats - who surround Basra from the north-west down to the south-east, continued to man checkpoints across the bridges that span the canal to the west of the city.

They allowed civilians to come and go and tried to glean fresh intelligence on the situation inside the city.

For almost a week, the soldiers have exchanged artillery fire with the irregular forces still inside the city.

They have already made gains in the outskirts of the city, including through a major operation involving 600 Royal Marines from 40 Commando.

Earlier this week, the coalition managed to mount lightning raids into the city centre to discomfit and demoralize the Iraqi militia.

Officials from the United States and Britain have acknowledged the expected uprising against the Iraqi leader by Shiite residents of Basra and other southern towns in support of coalition troops has not materialized to any large degree.

But members of 40 Commando, from Taunton, in Somerset, who are on the streets of the suburb of Abu al-Khasib, yesterday said local people were pleased to see them.

Securing the area is a key part of the coalition plans to prevent Iraqi forces escaping from Basra and halting aid convoys.