They refused to flee the mob ... duty made them stay behind the doorway to death
By Daniel McGrory in al-Majar and Michael Evans
Not a shot was fired in al-Majar during the Iraq war. Yet in peace the town saw Britain‘s deadliest encounter with the Iraqis
The bloodstains are streaked across the stone floor, the walls pockmarked with bullet holes. Every window has been shot out.
In the lavatory block of this town’s police station, four members of the Royal Military Police made their final stand on Tuesday. One apparently died in the doorway, the other three inside, after a gunfight with a mob of 300 angry townspeople.
Exactly what happened is still unclear but, by all accounts, the British soldiers who died in al-Majar-al-Kabir did so gallantly. They are said to have ordered the Iraqi civilians that they had been training as police officers to flee and to have offered to surrender but were killed anyway.
“I’m so ashamed I left them,†Salam Mohammed, one of the trainees, said yesterday.
The Britons had tried to shield the terrified trainees from the mob, he said, his body shaking. “They told us to save ourselves though they refused to run away. They were murdered in cold blood. There was no way they could escape.â€
Ali al-Ateya, an Iraqi radio journalist, claims that he saw the Britons offering to surrender their weapons after two of their colleagues had already been shot dead. Ringleaders snatched the rifles and killed the soldiers.
“They shot the British in the head, several times. The executioners were standing right in front of the Britons,†he said.
An ambulanceman who helped take away the victims’ bodies confirmed that all four had been shot in the head. Two Iraqis also died.
Yesterday the Ministry of Defence was struggling to answer even the most basic questions about the deaths of the six men.
There was complete confusion, British commanders in southern Iraq admitted, and with troops and investigators staying out of the town for fear of exacerbating tensions, there seems little chance of them finding answers quickly.
Local Iraqis said the British “occupiers†had inflamed feelings over the weekend with heavy-handed weapons searches — which the Army denied.
British commanders in southern Iraq said the six soldiers arrived unannounced in the town on Tuesday morning. They were caught up in an angry crowd and shots were fired. Two RMPs were killed, along with possibly four Iraqis. The crowd then advanced on the police station where four other RMPs had taken refuge.
It is unclear if the officers were unable to summon help or why it failed to arrive.
Defence sources now believe that a patrol of British paratroopers was ambushed close to the town just after, not before, the killings. A Chinook helicopter that came to their rescue was also fired on, and eight soldiers injured.
The paratroopers knew nothing of the killings but British commanders assume Iraqi gunmen opened fire because they feared the British were seeking revenge.
It was also unclear whether the attacks were spontaneous, or whipped up by Saddam loyalists. “We know that some Baath Party loyalists and Fedayin have been hiding in this area,†the local police chief, Mohammed Abdel Hassan, said. “But I don’t know if any of them were in the mob.â€
The RMP team had come to discuss uniforms for the trainees. They wanted local people to recognise the new police officers, who had been patrolling in civilian clothes.
Mr Mohammed said that when the mob arrived at the station, two of the British soldiers immediately climbed on to the flat roof of the mud-brick station house and tried to reason with the crowd shaking the flimsy iron gates. The mob forced its way into the station precinct which is built around an open courtyard.
He recalled one of the Britons radioing for help and said that, even then, there was no obvious panic by the RMPs although they could see some of the crowd waving rifles.
Mr Mohammed is not sure who fired the first shot, or why. All he knows is that at least four shots rang out.
The Britons shouted for the trainees to run for cover while they inched their way backwards to the lavatory block.They formed a barricade from a metal filing cabinet and an oil drum. One edged around the corner of the room and was shot in the forehead from 10ft away. As he died, the crowd fell silent, giving the Iraqi trainees a chance to run across the open corridor to an office with a window big enough for a man to squeeze through.
“I turned and shouted for the British to come too,†Mr Mohammed said. “I pleaded with them ‘Save yourselves’. One called out that it was their duty to stay. One smiled and wished me luck.â€
Nobody can be sure who fired the first fatal shot, or why. But Mr Mohammed said it was clear that the mob knew they had the British at their mercy. He was too ashamed and scared to translate the insults hurled at the RMPs and his fellow police officers for “collaborating with occupiersâ€.
Not a shot was fired in anger in al-Majar during the war, and its police station was not ransacked. But yesterday, as the British soldiers lay dead at their feet, the mob tore into the offices, tipping documents on to the floor and burning them. The bonfires were still burning 24 hours later.
“We will never erase what happened here,†Mr Hassan said. “This is a place of shame for al-Majar.â€
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-725965,00.html
