AMONG their ranks were an Iraqi American who had abandoned his grocery store in Missouri and a former nightclub bouncer from London.

Hundreds of Iraqi exiles, assembled under the banner of the Free Iraqi Force, opened a new front in the battle to oust Saddam Hussein yesterday after flying to the south of the country on a perilous mission to incite rebellion in its cities.

Guided by Colonel Ted Seel, a grizzled American Vietnam veteran and expert in psychological warfare, the force will use tribal contacts and guerrilla attacks to trigger uprisings in southern cities such as Basra.

From widely different backgrounds, but united in their determination to fight Saddam, its members seemed reminiscent of the Free French Forces with which General Charles de Gaulle helped liberate his homeland from the Nazis in 1944.

The force, many of whom have lost relatives to Saddam’s murderous regime, will try to trigger uprisings in Basra and other southern cities.

To succeed, they must first overcome the Fedayeen Saddam, the brutal militia led by Uday, Saddam’s son, which maintained its grip on cities surrounded by allied forces last week despite predictions of a revolt.

The exiles’ offensive, codenamed Crescent Rising, is led by Ahmed Chalabi, head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC), who had mustered his men in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

Chalabi was due to fly to a secret location in southern Iraq last night to co-ordinate the operation after persuading officials in Washington that a fighting Iraqi force was essential to rally opposition to the regime and help to bring it down.

When the Americans gave their approval late last week, the soldiers of the Free Iraqi Force poured off buses to their assembly point in a barren field ringed by low stone walls. A few could barely hide their grins. Others had grave faces. The next stop was an American plane to southern Iraq.

The first group boarded a Galaxy transporter on Friday night; further waves will follow. The total should reach thousands after their action begins this week.

The force against Saddam consists mostly of Arabs. Although paid a generous £25 a week, they had a frustrating few months in Kurdistan, training and waiting for the call. Now they were going home.

This is not the war of the Americans and the British. For these men it is an intimate war. Everyone I met spoke of a brother or sister imprisoned, threatened, tortured or humiliated.

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