AFP: US forces on intensified their battle against pro-Saddam Hussein loyalists and armed resistance in Iraq, as thousands of Iraqi protestors demanded self-rule in the British-run southern city of Basra.

The US military unleashed a new operation codenamed Desert Scorpion against forces loyal to the ousted former president in northern Iraq, a coalition spokesman said Sunday.

"We are targeting anyone who is striking against US soldiers," said Sergeant 1st Class Brian Thomas of coalition Joint Task Force 7.

"Some of them are Baath Party members and some of them are against our peace efforts. We have detained people, but we don't have any numbers."

US Central Command said the operation was to "isolate and defeat remaining pockets of resistance seeking to delay the transition to a peaceful and stable Iraq."

This operation was designed to "identify and defeat selected Baath party loyalists, terrorist organizations and criminal elements while delivering humanitarian aid simultaneously."

Centcom had earlier announced the end of Operation Peninsula Strike, a six-day US military assault in north-central Iraq to clamp down on pro-Saddam fighters.

The campaign left at least 113 people dead, including at least one foreigner, according to a tally from Iraqi witnesses and US officials.

American military officials said 31 fighters had been killed but reported no US deaths.

Meanwhile a daughter of Saddam Hussein told Britain's Sunday Times newspaper she is convinced her father is still alive.

The former dictator's eldest daughter Raghad Hussein said she was no longer in touch with her father or brothers Uday and Qusay but believed they had all survived.

"The last time I spoke to my father was five days before the war," which was launched on March 20, Raghad said. "He was in good spirits. I know he survived the war.

"But once Baghdad fell it was all so quick, all the family went our own ways. I am not in touch with any of them. But I believe they are still alive."

The family had not left Baghdad until April 9. "We heard on the radio that the Americans had entered the city and occupied it so at noon that day we all left," Raghad said.

Over two months after the Iraqi capital fell to US troops, the whereabouts and fate of Saddam remain a mystery.

Raghad denied media reports that she had considered seeking asylum in Britain.

Raghad dismissed the notion she had broken off relations with Saddam: "He is my father and I am his daughter," she said: "I hope he's alive. He was a very good father."

Iraqis snubbed a coalition deadline to surrender their weapons by Sunday, June 15, with occupying forces reporting only a few hundred arms surrendered.

About five million weapons are believed to be in circulation in Iraq where lawlessness has taken root since the April 9 ouster of Saddam's regime.

The coalition arms controls which came into force after a two-week amnesty period allow private individuals to keep light weapons in their homes and businesses.

But separately it requires all Iraqi factions to disarm their militias, outside the three northern provinces still held by two Kurdish former rebel groups which fought alongside the coalition.

Some 10,000 people demonstrated in Basra demanding that the British army allow Iraqis to run the southern capital.

A British military vehicle was stoned outside army headquarters.

The demonstrators led by Shiite religious figures marched through the streets with banners against occupation and warning "Answer our demands or you will regret it."

They rallied outside the headquarters of British forces who occupy southern Iraq where three children dressed in white shrouds chanted "Down, down tyranny, Down down Jews" and "Leave our land".

British officers promised to give an answer by Tuesday to demands that the people of Basra be allowed to set up an administrative council and a consultative council, said Sheikh Khazrej Saadi.

British forces announced May 24 they would replace an Iraqi city council hailed as a model of postwar cooperation with a committee of technocrats chaired by a British military commander for Basra, which has a population of some 1.5 million people.

The decision sparked an angry reaction from the 30-member council, which is headed by a local tribal chief and was working to re-establish civic order in the southern city with British and US blessing.

A respected elder Iraqi statesman, Adnan Pachachi, said military sweeps through civilian areas with mass arrests, interrogations and gunbattles were inflaming sentiments against the American and British occupation, The New York Times reported.

If such sweeps continued, they would be "exploited by the Baathists," he predicted, according to the report. "It would be much better if we didn't have these operations."

A former foreign minister who returned to Iraq last month after more than 30 years in exile, Pachachi emphasised that he supported allied efforts to restore security in the country.

But "these incidents will not help to pacify the country," Pachachi said. "For now, the quieter it is, the better."

The US-led administration has meanwhile vowed to cleanse Iraqi textbooks of all references to Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime in time for the new school year, as pupils prepare to sit final exams still based on the politicised curriculum of the old regime.

"We have already started reviewing textbooks to excise out offensive Baathist propaganda and pictures of Saddam Hussein," the coalition's education adviser, Dorothy Mazaka, told AFP.