A Bradford peace expert today warned that coalition troops will be fighting in Iraq for months rather than days.

Professor Paul Rogers, head of Peace Studies at Bradford University, is giving a twice-weekly analysis of events in the conflict.

He believes that many aspects of the war so far, which have moved at "an extraordinary pace", have been unexpected, including the amount of fierce resistance that ordinary Iraqis are putting up in cities of Southern Iraq.

Hampered by the fighting, ambushes on supply lines and the swirling sandstorms, the chances of Saddam Hussein's regime collapsing over the next few days are "relatively remote", according to Prof Rogers.

"It looks like this may be a war that will be fought over weeks and months and not over days that some people confidently expected," he said.

"We did expect the American forces to move rapidly towards Baghdad, but the very speed of the movement is leaving long supply lines. The surprise is that there are ambushes and other actions by the Iraqi forces which are causing casualties on the American side.

"One of the greatest surprises is that cities in Southern Iraq such as Basra have not fallen to the US and British troops and there doesn't seem to be the huge welcome, the liberating welcome, that was expected from ordinary Iraqis.

"Essentially, they are more loyal to Saddam Hussein than people expected and want to defend their land."

The appalling weather has held up the American advance to Baghdad, which was compounded by serious damage to their Apache helicopters by a "hail of small arms fire".

"Because of the damage, the attack they were going to stage was called off. They are having trouble trying to pin down the Republican Guard, the main fighting core of the Iraqi army and the best equipped.

"The weather has affected the Americans most because they have high-tech equipment that is more easily damaged and the Iraqis are used to sandstorms.

"The Americans have started to engage with them outside Baghdad but it is possible that, because of these other difficulties, they will not start attacking Baghdad for a few days because they may need to bring in reinforcements, mainly armoured tanks."

Despite "tremendously intensive" bombing on the capital, it was not as much as was expected, which Prof Rogers attributes mainly to the massive anti-war sentiment shown in several countries.

"The Americans are trying to avoid killing civilians because of the political impact, but at least 100 have been killed so far, so they are not succeeding."