I HEARD the screams first, then saw the mob of men and children wielding sticks and throwing rocks.

They shouted as they ran down a busy road in the east of Basra towards a group of men. They had seen their targets and pointed. “Fedayin,” they screamed. “Death to the Fedayin.”

A pair of men broke loose and started to run towards us, cowering from the stones. One had a trickle of blood running down his forehead and nose. A look of terror was stretched across his bearded face.

Stones rained around us, crashing against our car as I ducked behind the bumper. Then the chase began.

Down the street the two men ran in ragged sandals, a crowd of 50 on their tail.

One of the pursued pulled out a pistol as he approached Jon Mills, a photographer from the Western Daily Press. Mills said: “The man wanted to give up the weapon, but he knew the crowd would shoot him with it if he dropped it. He was seriously scared, pleading for his life.”

The man ran on towards another car. Stumbling forward, with the last steps he could summon, he fell into the vehicle. It sped away.

The other man, his bulky body heaving for air in the mid-afternoon heat, was now alone. He stopped, turned to face the mob and was immediately beaten to the ground.

Some of the crowd took off their shoes to slap him and a large wound opened up on the back of his head, matting his hair and turning his sweat-stained brown shirt a scarlet red. Then the people fetched a cart and they dumped him in the back of it. They wanted to parade him to the city, a symbol of Saddam’s evil regime.

He looked up, his eyes glazed over as the blur of another stick beat his body. He did not blink. Nor did he groan or shout; he simply sat, crumpled, in the cart.

The crowd argued over what to do with him, but soon the decision was taken away from them. Around the corner roared a long convoy of tanks and soldiers from the 7th Armoured Brigade.

They cleared the crowd, took the man from the cart and bundled him into the back of an armoured vehicle.

This is a pooled report from Richard Edwards of the Western Daily Press for the British press

Times Recommends

• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Indian Army spends10m rupees on golf buggies
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating