BAGHDAD, June 24: Coalition forces in Iraq on Tuesday suffered their heaviest losses since the beginning of the occupation when six British soldiers killed in an ambush in southern Iraq, while other clashes left five Iraqis dead.
The British losses were their first combat fatalities since hostilities were declared over on May 1 and came as the US-led forces admitted acts of political sabotage were hindering efforts to rebuild Iraq.
The British troops were killed in two separate incidents near Al Amarah, 200 kilometres north of Basra, the government said in London, adding that eight others were wounded, three of them seriously.
“There have been two incidents today near Al Amarah. We very much regret to confirm that in one incident, six British personnel have been killed,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
The attacks followed clashes on Monday night in the flashpoint town of Fallujah and nearby Ramadi that left five Iraqis dead, military sources and witnesses said.
In two separate incidents in Ramadi, around 100 kilometres west of Baghdad, US troops opened fire on vehicles that refused to stop at military checkpoints, killing four people.
A clash in Fallujah, around 50 kilometres nearer Baghdad, left one Iraqi man dead, killed by a US patrol after the attack. US military sources were unable to confirm witness reports that two rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) were fired at US troops guarding a power distribution station in the town.
Two Iraqis were lightly wounded on Monday in Baghdad’s southern suburb of Dura when a grenade hurled at US soldiers missed its target and blew up by them.
The attacks came amid US efforts to focus on rebuilding the battered country, shattered by 13 years of international sanctions and a blistering three-week allied bombing wave.
But US officials were forced to admit on Tuesday that they were confronted with political sabotage, amid pipeline explosions and an unexplained loss of power in the capital for more than a day.
“We are experiencing acts of political sabotage by small pockets that seek to project an image to the Iraqi people that life is worse for them now than it was before,” said a senior official from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
“Whether or not it is connected to the power outage today, I don’t know. But it is a broader issue that we’re contending with,” he said.
Efforts to get the country back up and running have been hit by suspected sabotage blasts on three fuel pipelines in the last two weeks.
Although the US authorities have yet to account for the explosions — one of which on the main oil export pipeline from Kirkuk, in the north, to Turkey has delayed oil shipments — Iraqi officials have said they were deliberate attacks.—AFP
