IRAQ: Funeral held in Basra for five Shi'ite militiamen killed in clashes with British forces.

Weeping and beating their chests in grief relatives mourned the death of five members of the Shi'ite militia of Mehdi Army in the southern port city of Basra on Tuesday (July 18). Relatives said that British forces killed the five men in the early hours on Tuesday, following mortar attacks by the Mehdi Army on the British base in the city. The city has witnessed unrest over the past two days following the detention of the leader of the Shi'ite Mehdi Army in southern Basra province in the latest operation against rogue militia leaders blamed for worsening sectarian violence in the country. The man, identified on Monday by comrades in the Shi'ite group as Sajad Abu Aya, was arrested early on Sunday (July 16) in a major British military operation involving helicopters and hundreds of troops in which one soldier was killed and another wounded. Basra, once regarded as a quiet area of mainly Shi'ite a southern Iraq, has seen a rise in violence in the past year as rival Shi'it militias vie for control of the city and central oil hub. 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.

ITN Source | July 18, 2006

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