British stay in base as Shia attacks grow across Iraq

Published on Wednesday 26 March 2008 21:24

BRITISH forces remained firmly out of the fray yesterday as fierce clashes with Shia militias in Basra raged for a second day.

Forty people were confirmed dead in the city and 200 wounded after Iraqi security forces launched a major operation to suppress militant groups vying for control.

But with the epicentre of the fighting just a few miles from where the bulk of the UK's remaining 4,100 troops in southern Iraq are garrisoned, British commanders insisted it was "highly unlikely" they would get directly involved.

Recently retired US general, Jack Keane, a leading supporter of the American "surge" in Iraq, yesterday urged Britain to increase its troop strength vastly ,instead of cutting it.

Britain hopes to cut troop numbers from 4,000 to 2,500.

But Major Tom Holloway, the UK military spokesman in Iraq, said: "The Iraqi authorities have planned and are executing the operation. It is very much their business." The British role was to support them after handing provincial control to the Iraqis in December 2007, he said.

The Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, gave the militias an ultimatum to surrender as cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for talks to end the fighting.

At least 15 people were killed in Sadr City, Baghdad's main Shia district. After three days of rocket attacks on the Green Zone diplomatic and government compound, a mortar bomb there seriously injured three US citizens.

Police said at least ten people, including a baby girl, were killed and 31 wounded in further clashes in Kut, 105 miles south of Baghdad. In the northern town of Tikrit, a US air strike killed five Iraqi civilians, including a judge, and wounded ten.

The world price of oil jumped yesterday, driven partly by the fighting in Basra, the Iraqi oil capital, with warnings that production and exports from the southern oilfields could be disrupted in three days if workers cannot reach their offices.

British jets operating out of Basra Airport, the last British garrison in the country, have continued to provide air cover for Iraqi forces. And Iraqi helicopters have made repeated stops at the British camp to refuel and resupply.

But with the operation expected to last at least two to three more days, UK ground troops remain at the camp in the first big test of the "hands off" approach after the transfer of power.

While US forces have been fighting alongside Iraqis, British commanders insisted that they would not play a direct part unless requested to do so.

&#149 A British soldier was shot and killed in Iraq yesterday. The soldier died in a firefight in the early hours, a spokesman for the MoD said.

Sources said he died in Baghdad, but the MoD refused to comment on whether special forces troops were engaged in operations with US and Iraqi troops.

FRONT-LINE EXCLUSIONS

TELEVISION images from Iran of Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the only female among the British Marines and sailors arrested in the Gulf in March 2007, focused attention on the role of women in the armed forces, especially at the front line.

Some 67 per cent of army posts are open to women, compared with 71 per cent in the Royal Navy and 96 per cent in the RAF. Women are not allowed to serve as Royal Marines, in the Household Cavalry, or any of the infantry regiments, although the Gurkhas say they have plans to recruit women.

In May 2002, a Ministry of Defence review judged that the case for lifting restrictions on women serving in close-combat roles had not been made and that women should remain excluded from duties "required deliberately to close with and kill the enemy face to face".