Five members of Sadr’s Mehdi Army were killed and nine British soldiers were wounded when gunbattles erupted in both Basra and the town of Amara further north, according to the British army and Iraqi medics.
Gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) mingled with protestors at the provincial governor’s office and the former headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party before firing on British troops in the centre of Basra, a military spokesman said.
The violence followed days of fighting between US troops and Sadr’s militiamen around the south-central holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, in which scores of radicals were killed.
