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| Iraq | |
| British forces detain militia leader in Iraq | |
| 2006-07-17 | |
The man, identified on Monday by comrades in the Shi'ite group as Sajad Abu Aya, was arrested early on Sunday in a major British military operation involving helicopters and hundreds of troops in which one soldier was killed and another wounded. "We got the man we wanted," military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge told Reuters on Monday, while declining to identify by name two men captured in the town of Garma just north of Basra city, Iraq's main oil hub. The main suspect was "strongly suspected of involvement in planning and directing terrorist attacks on civilians in Basra, executions, and attacks on coalition forces", Burbridge said. Security has deteriorated sharply over the past year in Basra, where there is a complex network of criminal gangs and warring Shi'ite militias. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has declared a state of emergency to crack down on the violence, which threatens oil exports, the backbone of the Iraqi economy. Southern Iraq has been relatively free of the violence gripping other parts of the country, but the region has seen increasing roadside bomb attacks on British troops, who number about 7,000. Britain's visiting defence minister said in May the violence had reached "unacceptable" levels. A spokesman for the Basra office of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, who controls the Mehdi Army, confirmed Abu Aya had been arrested. He described him as a militia leader, but local residents said he was in overall command in the province. Burbridge said the detained suspect was "believed to have been acting against the wishes of Sadr". | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 One of our boys was killed capturing this swine. I wonder if our lads have been reading about the RAB adventures. Surely there's a few round of bullet and shutter gun nearby... |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2006-07-17 16:09 |