DAR AL ISLAM - IRAQ: BRITS REPEL AN ATTACK BY SHIITES IN BASRA

Attacks on UK forces feared as Basra's Shia leader is killed
By Kim Sengupta

On the day that the radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr appeared in public for the first time in months, his chief lieutenant in Basra was shot dead in an operation by British and Iraqi government forces.

The killing of Wissam Abu Qader, the commander of the Shia Mehdi Army, and two of his aides, immediately raised the prospect of retaliatory attacks on UK forces.

The Iraqi police stated that Qader had been killed in a gun battle with British forces in central Basra.

The Sadr organisation also blamed the British for the death, claiming Qader and his men were killed as they left a mosque after Friday prayers. One official of the group, Abdul Mahdi al-Mutir, said: "We heard it was the British troops who killed him. Maybe there were Iraqi forces with them, but we do not know for sure. They ambushed and killed them at the entrance to a holy place."

But the British Army said that the Mehdi Army commander was killed by Iraqi special forces while "resisting arrest" as he left the offices of the Sadr organisation in central Basra in an operation authorised by the Iraqi government.

The British spokesman, Major David Gell, said Qader was wanted for planting roadside bombs, weapons trafficking, political assassinations and carrying out attacks on British forces.

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