|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Two UK soldiers die in Basra ambush
Two British soldiers were killed in Basra, southern Iraq, on September 28 when their patrol was ambushed by insurgents. An army spokesman said the forward vehicle in a convoy of two armoured Land Rovers had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. As soldiers from the second vehicle attempted to rescue those inside, they came under attack from small arms fire. "A Land Rover was badly damaged, we believe by a rocket propelled grenade," the spokesman said. "As casualties were being extracted from the Land Rover, they came under small arms fire." Two injured soldiers taken from the scene later died at the British military hospital in Shaibah, near Basra. Their names and units were not being announced until their families had been informed. Basra hospital officials said at least two Iraqi civilians had been injured in the incident. News of the latest British fatalities came as the prime minister, Tony Blair - already under pressure over the increasing insurgency in Iraq and the fate of the British hostage Kenneth Bigley - prepared to address the Labour party conference in Brighton. His arrival at the conference centre, on the Sussex town's seafront, will be greeted by a large anti-war demonstration. Fresh violence today broke out in Falluja, where US warplanes attacked what the US military claimed was a hideout used by followers of the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose organisation has claimed responsibility for attacks and the beheadings of foreign hostages. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, yesterday warned that the insurgency in Iraq was worsening, while Washington and London's most stable ally in the Middle East, King Abdullah of Jordan, today said he believed the security situation would make it impossible to hold elections in January. Speaking during a visit to France, the King told Le Figaro newspaper that extremists would gain the upper hand if elections were to take place under current conditions in Iraq. "It seems impossible to organise indisputable elections in the chaos of Iraq today," he was quoted as saying. "The situation is very, very difficult and, in the immediate [future], I don't see any chance of improvement." Re-establishing security was the biggest challenge facing the interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, the King said. He said Jordan wanted to see the return of the former Iraqi army - not generals, but middle-ranking chiefs and officers "who alone have the numbers and the capacity to re-establish order". "The biggest mistake of the Americans was to dissolve the security forces and to purge the administrations of hundreds of thousands of members of the Ba'ath party," he said. Meanwhile, Mr Bigley's family were today waiting to find out whether the latest appeals for his release - including one from the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat - would have any impact on the kidnappers. Mr Arafat yesterday added to the pressure on the 62-year-old Briton's kidnappers when he said he would help in "every way possible". A delegation of British Muslims was today due to return home after travelling to Baghdad to make televised appeals for the engineer's release. Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said he was confident they had "got the message across" to the kidnappers, conveying it through key political, religious and community leaders. There has been no word on Mr Bigley's fate since his abductors released video of him pleading for Mr Blair to save his life seven days ago. |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
