A British soldier has been killed and another injured during an attack at a UK base in Basra, southern Iraq, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) reported yesterday.
The two soldiers were said to have been hit in an ‘indirect fire attack’ at the Shatt Al-Arab Hotel after mortars landed inside the base perimeter.
The dead soldier was from the Royal Army Medical Corps. The soldiers’ names have not yet been released by the MoD.
The death on Sunday brings the British death toll in Iraq to 119.
A British military spokesman in Basra said that about 15 mortars were fired at the base, with three or four landing inside the perimeter.
The soldiers were taken to hospital, where one later died. The other suffered a broken arm, the Army spokesman said.
The US military reported on Monday that three marines died in separate incidents in Iraq’s insurgent western province of Anbar.
Two of the marines were killed Sunday in enemy action while a third died in a ‘non-combat related’ vehicle accident.
The latest fatalities bring the number of US servicemen killed since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq by US-led forces to 2,712 according to Pentagon figures.
Elsewhere, three soldiers from the Iraqi puppet army’s quick reaction force were killed in an ambush by armed men early Monday near Kut city, southeast of Baghdad.
