IRAQ: The six British soldiers shot dead in southern Iraq on Tuesday were killed by Iraqi civilians, furious over intrusive sweeps for arms in their homes.
The bloodshed was sparked by a protest brimming with tension, residents said yesterday. They claimed four Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in the clashes.
Thousands of Iraqis in this conservative Shia Muslim town of al-Majar al-Kabir staged a demonstration to protest against searches for weapons launched by British soldiers on Saturday. Residents accused the troops of bursting into their homes with sniffer dogs, which many Muslims consider impure, and pointing guns at women and children.
Witnesses said British forces tried to control the crowd by firing plastic bullets, but one resident, Nasser Kadhem, said when the British patrol came under fire, the soldiers responded with live ammunition.
He said two soldiers in the patrol died at that point.
He said angry residents then stormed the local police station some 400 metres away where another group of soldiers was meeting policemen, peppering the building with rifle rounds. Four died in the station, Kadhem added. Reporters in the town saw bullet holes in cars and buildings.
Other residents said British troops fired plastic bullets but some in the crowd believed they were using live rounds.
"I yelled at them because they pointed their rifles at a child. I told them 'don't do that' but a soldier hit me with the butt of his rifle in the face," said one resident who refused to give his name. "Then the shooting started."
A spokesman for the British Ministry of Defence said he could not confirm whether the soldiers were carrying rubber bullets.
"Our understanding is that they were liaising with local police forces, but I can't say on the basis of that whether they would have been equipped with baton rounds. We're still trying to find that out," he said.
In a second incident on Tuesday, seven soldiers were wounded when a helicopter was fired on as it went to help a military convoy under attack. A British soldier in the convoy was wounded.
Both episodes of violence occurred near the city of Amarah, 200 km north of Iraq's British-controlled second city, Basra.
Unlike US troops in mainly Sunni central Iraq, British soldiers who control the mainly Shia south have encountered relatively few problems since the war began on March 20th.
Amarah and its surroundings were a hotbed for anti-Saddam rebels in an uprising after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. Baghdad forces crushed the rebellion, killing thousands.
A British military spokesman in Iraq, Lieut-Col Ronnie McCourt, said the killing of the six soldiers was murder.
He disputed the Iraqi version of the shooting and said all the soldiers were killed in the police station. "The emotion here is deep, deep disappointment among the soldiers. It has changed," he said referring to the previous relaxed measures by British forces in southern Iraq.
Col McCourt said the shootings were not part of a carefully planned attack and after meeting local tribal leaders in an attempt to ease tension, he concluded the shootings were an isolated incident.
"It was something that got out of hand," he told CNN.
Iraqis however remained incensed at the methods used to search their homes. "These British soldiers came with their dogs and pointed weapons at women and children. As Muslims, we can't accept dogs at our homes," Rabee al-Malki told Reuters.
"A British soldier held the underwear of a woman and stretched it. How can we accept this as Muslims and as Shias?" Faleh Saleem asked.
Residents in Amarah said they would not accept a British presence in their town any more.
In the House of Commons yesterday, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, expressed "deepest sympathy and condolences" to the families of the six British soldiers.
Mr Blair said the Royal Military policemen had been doing an "extraordinary and heroic job", adding "the whole country and their families can be immensely proud of them". - (Reuters, PA)