Iraq: British forces used tanks last night to break down the walls of Basra jail and free two British undercover soldiers who had been arrested for firing on police.
Earlier angry crowds attacked a British tank with petrol bombs and rocks in the southern Iraqi city, following the arrests of the two men.
Last night witnesses reported that about 150 Iraqi prisoners had also fled the jail.
The British Ministry of Defence would not comment on the report. Earlier a British soldier was engulfed by flames as he scrambled out of a burning tank, witnesses said. According to an interior ministry official, two Iraqis were killed in the violence.
"We can confirm that a shooting incident involving UK military personnel has taken place which is currently being investigated," a British military spokesman said in a statement.
"Two UK military personnel have been detained and we are liaising with the Iraqi authorities on this matter." An Iraqi official in Basra said the British military had informed him that the detained men were undercover soldiers.
"They were driving a civilian car and were dressed in civilian clothes when a shooting took place between them and Iraqi patrols," the official said. "We are investigating and an Iraqi judge is on the case questioning them."
One of the men sat with a bandage on his head after they were detained, a Reuters photographer said. His trousers were stained with blood spots.
According to police and interior ministry officials, the men were wearing traditional Arab headdresses for their undercover mission. Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate, said the two men looked suspicious to police.
"A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them," he said. "They refused to say what their mission was. They said they were British soldiers and to ask their commander about their mission."
A witness said people later drove through the streets of Basra with megaphones, demanding that the undercover soldiers remain in detention and be sent to jail.
Basra, capital of the Shia south, has been relatively stable compared with central Iraq, where Sunni Arab insurgents have killed thousands of Iraqi and US troops.