British stay in base as Shia attacks spread

Published on Thursday 27 March 2008 00:34

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

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.

&#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.