Aboard RFA Sir Galahad ? Desperately needed food and aid for people in southern Iraq was stranded offshore Thursday because of mines Saddam Hussein’s regime placed in the strategic Gulf port of Umm Qasr, military commanders said.

Coalition officials hoped to clear the explosives and relaunch the relief operation today.

“This port is fundamental to the feeding of the country,” said Roger Robinson-Brown, captain of the Sir Galahad, a British Royal Navy ship loaded with humanitarian supplies.

Air Marshal Brian Burridge, commander of British forces in the Persian Gulf, said two mines were discovered in the Umm Qasr shipping channel and detonated Wednesday during a sweep by Royal Navy divers and specially trained, mine-detecting dolphins.

More sweeps were ordered Thursday to make it safe for waiting ships to dock at Umm Qasr with thousands of tons of food and other supplies. Two Australian merchant vessels each are carrying 55,000 tons of wheat.

The mines found in the waterway can be programmed to let some ships pass and then detonate at certain point, U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told a briefing at Central Command in Qatar. Iraq developed the mines “from another country’s designs” even after U.N. sanctions had been imposed, Brooks added, refusing to elaborate.

“Before 1991, Iraq did not have these,” he said.

Civilians in the region got their first sizable delivery of aid Wednesday from seven trucks that came overland from Kuwait.

But aid agencies still fear a humanitarian crisis. Most Iraqi families are believed to have food to last only into late April.

Twelve years of economic sanctions have left 60 percent of the 22 million people dependent on government rations distributed under the U.N.’s oil-for-food program. The program, which began in 1996, lets Iraq sell unlimited quantities of oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods.

The program was suspended when the war began, and United Nations diplomats have feuded in recent days over how it should be administered when resumed. Countries that oppose the war want Washington to bear most of the burden of feeding and rehabilitating Iraq.

Spetz, a Bottle-Nosed dolphin, is beached up on a transfer mat before going out on a training mission from the deck of the USS Gunston Hall operating in the Arabian Gulf. Coalition forces are using two specially trained bottle-nosed Atlantic dolphins like Spetz, named Makai and Tacoma, to help ferret out mines in the approaches of the port of Umm Qasr, Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart of the Central Command said.