As Brits Return From Iran, 4 Die In Iraq
Four British soldiers were killed Thursday in an ambush in southern Iraq, and Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tehran's support for Iraqi militants could lead Britain "to reflect on our relationship with Iran."
The four British deaths — the biggest loss of life for British forces in more than four months — came as 15 British sailors and marines arrived home 13 days after they were seized by Iran off the Iraqi coast and held captive.
"Just as we rejoice at the return of our 15 service personnel, so today we are also grieving and mourning for the loss of our soldiers in Basra," Blair said.
In other developments:
"It is far too early to say that the particular terrorist act that killed our forces was an act committed by terrorists that were backed by any elements of the Iranian regime," he said. "But the general picture, as I said before, is that there are elements at least of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming, supporting terrorism in Iraq."
The British patrol struck a roadside bomb and was hit by small-arms fire about 2 a.m. in the Hayaniyah district in western Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, British military spokeswoman Capt. Katie Brown said.
A Kuwaiti civilian interpreter was also killed and a British soldier was seriously wounded, Brown said.
The explosion left a crater three feet deep. Hours after the attack, the helmet of a British soldier lay in the street alongside dozens of spent shells.
Police said the British patrol was en route from detaining 1st Lt. Haidar al-Jazaeri of the Interior Ministry's Major Crimes unit. The police would not say why al-Jazaeri had been detained.
The deaths raised to 140 the number of British forces who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, with 109 killed in combat.
Four British forces were killed Nov. 12 in an attack on a Multinational Forces boat patrol on the Shatt Al-Arab waterway in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. Ten Britons died in the Jan. 30, 2006, crash of a Hercules transport plane north of Baghdad.
Blair has announced that Britain will withdraw about 1,600 troops in the next few months and hopes to make other cuts to its 7,100-strong contingent by late summer.
The U.S. helicopter was the ninth to go down in Iraq this year, raising concern among the military that insurgents are using more sophisticated weapons or have figured out how to use the old arms in new and effective ways.
The U.S. military issued only a brief statement saying the helicopter went down and that the incident was under investigation.
An Iraqi army official said it was a Black Hawk that had gone down after it came under fire about 7:30 a.m. near the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad.
The Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said U.S. forces had cordoned off the site, which was in a rural area. He said the militants apparently were using anti-aircraft heavy machine guns.
Latifiyah, part of the area known as the Triangle of Death, is a stronghold of the Sunni-based insurgency, reports CBS News' Pete Gow.
The last helicopter incident occurred on March 1, when an OH-58 Kiowa made a hard landing in northern Iraq, leaving its two crew members wounded. A week earlier, ground fire forced down a Black Hawk north of Baghdad. Black Hawks are commonly used by the military for transportation in Iraq to avoid the dangers of roadside bombs and ambushes.
The U.S. military said its five soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in the Baghdad area, where thousands of American forces have taken to the streets with their Iraqi counterparts as part of the operation to quell sectarian violence in the city of 6 million.
A roadside bomb Wednesday killed two soldiers and wounded three others in southern Baghdad, while another blast north of the capital killed two soldiers and wounded one, the military said. The fifth soldier was killed Tuesday by small-arms fire while on patrol in a predominantly Shiite part of eastern Baghdad, the military said.
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell has expressed disappointment at the high level of violence in Iraq despite a drop in the overall death toll in Baghdad during the U.S.-Iraqi security sweep, now in its eighth week. The Iraqi government said it was extending the operation to confront spreading violence elsewhere.
In other violence, gunmen ambushed a prison checkpoint southwest of the northern city of, killing 10 policemen, the officials said.
The Iraqi government said Wednesday that it was extending the security crackdown to Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said parts of the city were completely under the control of militants.
In Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, police reported finding the bullet-riddled bodies of 20 men who were abducted at a checkpoint Wednesday, apparent victims of sectarian death squads.