10 killed in Basra car bomb attack

A CAR bomb in the centre of the British-patrolled Iraqi city of Basra killed at least ten people last night.

More than 15 others were injured in the bombing which devastated a restaurant in the country's second-largest city.

The restaurant is located in the centre of Basra's Hayaniyah district market, a section of the city largely consisting of the Shiite Muslims who dominate Basra.

Lieutenant Colonel Karim al-ZaidiIraqi, a police spokesman, said added that two police vehicles were also destroyed in the blast.

Basra has been relatively calm compared to the regions further north, which are mostly controlled by US forces and have been ravaged by an insurgency by minority Sunni Arabs against the Shiite-led government.

Though there have been tensions among rival Shiite militias, as well as between armed groups and British-led occupying troops, major attacks on civilians of the sort associated with Sunni Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda have been relatively rare.

Meanwhile, earlier yesterday, four American private security agents supporting the US embassy were killed in a car bombing near Basra, the embassy said.

And, on Monday, two British soldiers, Donal Anthony Meade, 20, from south-east London, and Fusilier Stephen Robert Manning, 22, from Kent, both with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, were killed in Basra province when a roadside bomb donated next to their armoured Land Rover.

The worst single attack on Basra occurred on 21 April last year when suicide bombers killed 73 people, including 17 children, in co-ordinated blasts targeting three police stations in the city and the police academy in nearby Zubeir.