BRITAIN was preparing to increase the firepower of its forces in Iraq as the US Army laid siege to the holy city of Najaf.

As revealed in yesterday's Northern Echo, soldiers from the region have been told to be ready to deploy to Iraq by the end of the week.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) confirmed troops from 5 Regiment Royal Artillery had been given their marching orders.

About 86 gunners will be flying to Iraq to join Operation Telic 4, starting tomorrow.

Their arrival will boost the firepower of Britain's contingent and could prove decisive if the situation continues to deteriorate.

The MoD would not say if the party is in addition to those already assigned to operations in the Gulf.

But a spokesman said the regiment was notified of the deployment only on Saturday. Usually, soldiers can expect several weeks' warning.

It is the third time 5 Regiment has sent soldiers to the Gulf from Marne Barracks, Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire.

Gunners from the unit were among the troops who swept into Iraq from Kuwait in March last year.

As men who fought in the second Gulf War returned to Catterick in July, others from the regiment took their places on Operation Telic 2, helping with security patrols and restoring the country's infrastructure.

Since then, the situation in Iraq has become increasingly volatile, although the British-controlled sector around Basra has escaped the worst of the trouble so far.

An Army spokesman said: "We had one or two problems with the locals a few days ago, but soldiers who have returned to Catterick recently say the situation around Basra is calmer."

The gunners from 5 Regiment will join more than 200 soldiers from the Queen's Royal Lancers, who left Catterick's Cambrai Barracks for Iraq at the start of the month.

The move came as US forces laid siege to Najaf in a bid to capture the cleric leading the uprising against coalition forces.

The 2,500-strong 3rd Brigade Task Force, along with Spanish and Polish troops, set up an exclusion zone around the city to prepare for a possible assault to capture Muqtada al-Sadr.

An attack would outrage Iraq's Shi'ite majority, a community that, apart from al-Sadr's militia, has shunned anti-US violence.

Iraqi clerics and politicians launched negotiations with al-Sadr, trying to get him to back down and avert a US attack.

There were hopes last night that he had dropped the conditions he imposed for opening negotiations with the Americans.

His envoy offered peace terms to spare a bloodbath. Abdelkarim al-Anzi said the cleric had asked him to convey peace proposals to the Americans.

The US army has branded al-Sadr an outlaw and pledged to kill or seize him.

Al-Sadr is wanted for the murder of a leading cleric in Najaf a year ago. Earlier, he vowed to continue what he called a popular revolution to end the US occupation.

The siege of the Sunni city of Fallujah continued yesterday with US warplanes and helicopter gunships firing heavy machine-guns, rockets and cannons.

Insurgents offered the Iraqi equivalent of £4,000 to anyone who kills Mouwafak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security advisor, after he called for Fallujah's residents to hand over militants to the US.

"We announce a bounty of ten million Iraqi dinar for whoever brings the head of this pig," the statement said.

With another four marines reported dead, more US troops have been killed in April - a total of at least 87 - than in any month since the military set foot in Iraq.