September 24, 2005

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - An Iraqi judge has issued arrest warrants for two British soldiers accused of killing a policeman in Basra, an Iraqi lawyer said on Saturday, as thousands rallied there in support of a new constitution.

Judge Raghib Hassan issued the warrants on Thursday, accusing the two of wounding a second Iraqi policeman, carrying unlicensed weapons and holding false identification, Kassim al-Sabti, head of the lawyers' syndicate in Basra, told Reuters.

Iraqi police had briefly detained the two undercover soldiers in the southern city on Monday before British troops freed them. Their current whereabouts is not known.

British Defense Secretary John Reid said the Ministry of Defense had not received any arrest warrant for British soldiers in
Iraq, adding that in any case the warrants would have no legal basis.

"Under Iraqi law it is quite clear that British forces remain subject to British jurisdiction," he said in a statement.

British forces mounted a bid to free the two soldiers after they were arrested on Monday, but were initially repelled as a crowd of angry Iraqis petrol-bombed an armored vehicle.

British armored vehicles later broke down the walls of the jail. The two were freed from a private house nearby, where they were believed to have been held by a local militia.

Basra authorities said British troops killed two Iraqi police during the raid.

Monday's flare-up has harmed the relationship British forces were able to build with local Iraqis in and around Basra, a relatively stable city compared with other parts of Iraq.

Basra's governing council has suspended all cooperation with the British until they apologize, guarantee that similar actions do not recur and provide compensation for damage inflicted.

Two investigations into the events leading up to the rescue are under way by Iraqi authorities and the British military.

Iraqi police said U.S. troops killed a family of four in Kerbala, south of Baghdad, on Saturday, reflecting military nerves on edge across the country.

Police said the family's passenger car apparently got too close to a U.S. convoy, which opened fire, killing a father and mother and their 13-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter.

RALLY FOR CONSTITUTION

Basra is the largest city in majority-Shi'ite southern Iraq, and thousands of citizens rallied on Saturday in support of a proposed new Iraqi constitution which many Shi'ites hope will boost their status in the fragmented country.

The rally followed calls last week by Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to vote in favor of the charter, which will be put to a referendum on October 15.

Shi'ites were suppressed under
Saddam Hussein, who banned major religious ceremonies at the holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala and crushed a Shi'ite revolt in 1991. Such ceremonies have drawn crowds of a million or more since he was ousted.

Iraq's U.S.-backed government is dominated by southern Shi'ites and Kurds from the north -- to the dismay of the Sunni Arabs, who make up just 20 percent of the population but have dominated Iraq for decades.

Their influence has all but disappeared since Saddam fell. Many Sunnis fear if the constitution is approved at the referendum it will formalize their reduced role by giving Shi'ites broad autonomy in line with that already enjoyed by Kurds -- including control over oil revenues.

The government and its U.S. military backers face a Sunni insurgency across the country, in which police, soldiers and civilians are killed in daily bombings and shootings.

On Saturday morning, a suicide car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army checkpoint in Baghdad, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding five other people, police said.

The attack, near a restaurant in the capital's Karrada district, destroyed several cars.

Three soldiers and two civilians were wounded, police said. Iraqi police and the U.S. military sealed off the area.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.

"One of your dear brothers ... today blew himself up in a car near a group of infidels from the army, near Karrada in Baghdad, which destroyed two cars, and killed more than 11 infidels," it said in a statement.

Separately, a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb southeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Saturday. The death raises to 1,911 the number of U.S. troops to have died in Iraq since the start of the war.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami in Baghdad and Jeremy Lovell in London)