Four British soldiers killed in Iraq
Pastor Dale Morgan
Thursday April 5, 7:26 PM Reuters
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Four British soldiers killed in Iraq*
By Aref Mohammed
BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Four British soldiers and a civilian interpreter
were killed in a roadside bomb blast that destroyed their armoured
fighting vehicle in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Thursday, the
British military said.
The deaths brought to six the number of British soldiers killed in Iraq
this week, making it one of the deadliest for British forces since the
U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Separately, four American soldiers were killed in two roadside bomb
attacks in and around Baghdad on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.
Those attacks followed a relatively quiet period in Baghdad, where U.S.
and Iraqi forces have deployed thousands more troops to enforce a new
security crackdown seen as a last-ditch attempt to stop the country
tearing itself apart.
The U.S. military said it was also looking into reports that a military
helicopter had come down in an insurgent stronghold south of Baghdad.
Witnesses said heavy gunfire forced down what they said was an Apache
attack helicopter.
British military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Kevin Stratford-Wright
said a British force was ambushed on the western outskirts of Basra, the
hub of Iraq's main oil fields.
"The unit was involved in an operation elsewhere. As they were on they
way back from the operation it was targeted by roadside bomb in
conjunction with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades," he said.
A fifth soldier was seriously wounded. The nationality of the
interpreter was unclear.
The British military denied accusations by Iraqi police that British
troops had stormed a police checkpoint close to the scene of the attack
shortly afterwards and beaten some police.
At least 140 British soldiers have now been killed during the Iraq war.
More than 3,260 U.S. soldiers have been killed, along with tens of
thousands of Iraqis.
The attack in Basra tempered jubilation among British troops in Iraq
over the release by Iran of 15 British military personnel whom it had
held for two weeks after seizing them in the northern Gulf. The 15 flew
back to Britain on Thursday.
Britain says they were in Iraqi waters on a routine U.N. mission. Iran
says they strayed into its territorial waters.
SHI'ITE STRONGHOLD
The Basra attack took place near Hayaniya, a slum area on the
northwestern outskirts of Basra that is a stronghold of the Mehdi Army
militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The main blast left a crater in the road at least a metre deep and
several metres across.
"We heard two explosions that shook the house. I went out and saw one
armoured vehicle that was completely destroyed and another with less
damage. I saw some soldiers being taken away, but I don't know how
many," said one resident who declined to give his name.
Prime Minister Tony Blair said in February that Britain would begin
withdrawing a quarter of its 7,000 troops, who are stationed mainly in
and around Basra city, in the coming months, paving the way for Iraqis
to eventually take full control of Basra province.
Iraq's government announced on Wednesday that Iraqi forces would assume
control of the southerly Maysan province from British troops later in
April. British forces have already handed back two other southern provinces.
The commander of British forces said last month that the greatest
obstacle to Iraqis taking control of Basra province was the perception,
fuelled by the high number of attacks on British troops, that it was
lawless.
(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin, Aseel Kami, Dean Yates and Yara
Bayoumy in Baghdad)