The final verdict on the British effort to make Basra a better place will depend as much as anything on whether General Latif succeeds in his mission.
Earlier Wednesday, four American private security contractors were killed when their vehicle, part of a U.S. diplomatic convoy, struck a roadside bomb in southern Basra, a western official in Baghdad told CNN.
Sheik Mohammed Azzedawi, a tribal leader, spoke to NPR by phone from a Basra neighborhood that is a Mahdi stronghold.
In Basra, a Shiite-majority port city in southern Iraq, a car bombing at a gathering of day laborers killed 13 people and wounded 50, according to an official in the Basra Command, Iraq's southernmost military detachment.
British troops are tightening the ring around Basra in a slow move into the city.
But he acknowledged there had been a surge of violence in Basra and there had been a radical change in the type of weapons used.
BBC: NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Bombs spark Iraq Land Rover probe
Next year, it will also become home to the Basra Wall - a memorial dedicated to those killed in Iraq.
With such riches around it and Iraq's only port on its doorstep, the city of Basra could become a wealthy oil hub.
This week, Iraqi state television aired images of an Iraqi general in Basra standing by a seized cache of rockets, which he said could have been supplied only by Iran's army.
The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad said the troops were returning to their base at Basra airport after carrying out a re-supply mission at their Basra Palace base.
British Royal Commandos encircled its southern parts, and overnight Saturday the 7th Armored Brigade went into and secured a "chunk of central Basra, " military officials told David Bowden, a British reporter embedded in the area.
Major Alistair Stocker told the inquest the airbase at Basra was "like a small city" and very busy.
BBC: Huddersfield soldier's Iraq gun death 'drunken incident'
BASRA, Iraq (CNN) -- British forces have made their largest incursion into Basra, setting up a base inside Iraq's second-largest city.
Pte Barber, of 2nd Battalion, was killed in Basra, Iraq, a year earlier after he was hit by a ricocheting bullet while he drove a Warrior armoured vehicle during a night operation.
BBC: 2nd Battalion The Royal Welsh: Soldiers in Bridgend march
Bechtel engineers who meet with the Southern Iraq Electricity Co. in Basra each Sunday left a meeting thinking one substation was ready to go fully online, only to return a week later to find it had been completely stripped.
Fields, the American funny man, echoes the more recent feelings of many a resident in Basra.
Lance Corporal Craig Lundberg lost his sight when he was hit by a grenade in Basra.
Troops got to the center by pushing across bridges over a canal west of Basra.
Bechtel also nudged Al Abadi Group, a construction firm from Basra, to supply manpower, trucks and forklifts to start port repairs before getting proper approval.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned of a humanitarian disaster in Basra.
As the junior allies, British officers felt they could do nothing in Basra to change the course of a war being lost, they thought, by American troops in Baghdad.
Coalition officials were not sure if the column, which was attacked Wednesday afternoon, represented a counterattack on the Umm Qasr area or if it was a tactical retreat from Basra.
Fusilier Kelan John Turrington, 18, who had been in the Army for less than two years, was killed on Sunday night as British forces made a final push into Basra.
His militia's swift release of a British journalist seized in Basra was another positive sign.
Meanwhile, British military divers are searching a flooded underground bunker near Basra for chemical weapons.
Such a northern attack out of Basra would confront several severely weakened Iraqi Army units.
Now, "murder street" is part of a citywide effort to get Basra back on its feet.
应用推荐