Chopper Crash Sparks Basra Clashes
A British military helicopter crashed Saturday in Basra apparently downed by a missile, triggering a confrontation in which jubilant residents pelted British rescuers with stones, hurled firebombs and shouted slogans in support of a radical Shiite cleric.
Iraqi police said four British crew members were killed in the crash and five civilians, including a child, died in the melee as Shiite gunmen and British soldiers exchanged gunfire, police and witnesses said. About 30 Iraqis were injured, police said.
At least one British armored vehicle was set ablaze as a crowd of about 250 Iraqis, many of them teenagers, shouted "we are soldiers of the Sayed" — a reference to Shiite cleric and militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
Calm returned by nightfall as Iraqi authorities imposed a curfew and hundreds of Iraqi police and soldiers set up checkpoints and patrolled the streets, residents said. Sporadic rocket fire could be heard throughout the city, Iraq's second largest.
In Baghdad, President Jalal Talabani's security adviser warned the crash could signal more trouble in the south, which had been quieter than Baghdad or Sunni Arab areas in the north and west of Iraq.
"We had said that terrorism wouldn't be entrenched in one place," Lt. Gen. Wafiq al-Sammaraie told Al-Arabiya television. "Therefore, we should expect dangerous developments in the region after the crash."
The British Defense Ministry reported "casualties" in the afternoon crash but refused to give a figure or confirm the cause. Police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said the helicopter went down in a vacant lot between two houses after it was struck by a shoulder-fired missile — widely available among insurgents and armed militias in Iraq.
"British troops have come under attack by a variety of weapons, including small arms fire, petrol bombs, as well as blast bombs and stone," British spokeswoman Capt. Kelly Goodall said. "A small number of live rounds were returned by British troops in self defense. A number of (British) personnel received minor injuries."
In other developments:
In London, Britain's newly appointed defense secretary, Des Browne, said he was "deeply saddened" by the death of British soldiers "which reminds us of the risks our servicemen and women face every day" in Iraq.
"The situation on the ground is still developing and facts are still coming in," Browne said in a statement on his first full day on the job. "I would urge people not to speculate on what may have happened until the situation in Basra is calmer and we are able to establish the facts."
Regardless of the cause of the crash, the violence that followed underscores growing discontent over the presence of foreign soldiers among Shiites, who form an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 27 million people and have generally steered clear of the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
However, tensions in southern Iraq, where Britain has about 8,000 troops, have been rising.
On Saturday, three Polish soldiers were wounded in a bombing in the mostly Shiite city of Diwaniyah, the Polish military said. On April 27, a massive roadside bomb killed three Italian soldiers and one Romanian near the Shiite city of Nasiriyah, about 100 miles northwest of Basra.
Trouble in the Shiite south is due in part to the growing influence of the radical cleric al-Sadr, who led two armed uprisings against U.S.-led forces in 2004 and who has been an outspoken critic of the U.S.-led military mission.
Last September, British troops battled Shiite gunmen in Basra after two British undercover soldiers were seized by police, whose ranks have been infiltrated by Shiite militiamen. British forces launched a raid and freed the men.
Tensions boiled again in February when the London newspaper News of the World published video images that appeared to show British soldiers beating Iraqi civilians during a riot in Amarah in 2004.
Shiite anger has also been stoked by a perceived shift in U.S. policy since the arrival of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, a Sunni Muslim who has criticized the Shiite-led Interior Ministry for human rights abuses and made overtures to Sunni insurgents in hopes of convincing them to lay down their arms.
For British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Basra crash could not come at a worse time. The beleaguered prime minister angered many Britons including members of his own Labor Party by his support for the war.
On Friday, Blair carried out a sweeping overhaul of his Cabinet after Labor suffered a drubbing in local elections, drawing calls for the prime minister to set a firm timetable for leaving office.
Among those demoted Friday was Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who privately had questioned the wisdom of the U.S.-led invasion, according to the so-called Downing Street memos leaked last year.