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Troops return to scene of military police murders
STEPHEN FRASER AND BRIAN BRADY
MORE than 500 British troops yesterday returned to an Iraqi town for the first time since six military policemen were murdered by a mob.
The operation in al Majar al-Kabir was intended by UK forces as both a show of strength and a hearts-and-minds exercise to win back the support of the local population.
The visit came just hours after defence officials in London told Scotland on Sunday they had ruled out sending reinforcements to Iraq following last week’s attack.
The British force was met by a group of Shi’ite clerics and prominent officials from al Majar al-Kabir in a peaceful ceremony aimed at putting the trouble in the past.
Captain Guy Winter, 30, who made initial contact with the Iraqi delegation, said: "We are not here for retribution. We are here to re-establish communications and get the [rebuilding] process back on the road."
The return followed a drop of 52,000 leaflets on the southern Iraqi town. The leaflets promised that there would be no mass punishments for the killings, although military officials insisted they were not offering an amnesty to the killers of the military police, or Red Caps.
"The priority is to win back the hearts and minds of the people in that town," a British army spokesman said.
"But by doing that one of the benefits will be that hopefully we will be able to catch the people responsible."
The leaflets, dropped by a British aircraft, said: "Everyone regrets the loss of life in al Majar al-Kabir on 24 June 2003. However it was not an incident of our making and we will return to al Majar al-Kabir, otherwise the coalition can do nothing to help your town recover from years of Saddam’s misrule.
"We will not return to punish you, that was a tactic of Saddam’s regime."
Iraqis in the town rioted after fearing British soldiers would attempt to disarm them last Monday. A paratroop patrol escaped after coming under fire, but the crowd later turned on the policemen who were training Iraqi officers.
It emerged yesterday that the six Red Caps called for help some 30 minutes before they died, but their call might have been confused with a call for reinforcements from the Paras.
Major General Peter Wall, the senior British officer in southern Iraq, was yesterday reported to have said two distress calls were received.
Reg Keys, the father of one of the dead men, Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, spoke of his fears that the Red Caps were left with no chance against the mob.
Keys, from north Wales, said: "It would appear that they sent these six young men into a police station to do a job in a hostile country with hostile elements with very very little support around them.
"To think that they could get trapped with no immediate support to call upon is of some concern to me."
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, is digging in his heels against demands to send thousands more troops to help maintain order in Iraq. The minister ruled out more troops for Basra after three days of discussions with military chiefs.
Instead, Britain will continue reducing its presence in the Gulf according to a short-term plan to cut troop numbers in the area to 14,000 from the present total of almost 15,000. At the height of the conflict the figure was over 46,000.
A source close to Hoon last night said commanders on the ground believed they were capable of maintaining order in Basra and surrounding towns.
The source said: "The killings were a terrible incident but at the moment they are being seen as a one-off incident that does not suggest the situation has deteriorated."
Meanwhile, a special team of 50 troops will be sent to Afghanistan to help the Afghan government tackle lawlessness around the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, the MoD announced.
Last night the MoD strategy was backed by Lieutenant Colonel Mike Riddell-Webster, the commanding officer of the Black Watch, which returned to its German base on Friday.
Asked if more British troops should be sent, Riddell-Webster said: "You could send the whole British army and it wouldn’t solve the central problem. The only long-term solution to policing Iraq is to work together with the local police and get them to do it."
In another development yesterday, the bodies of two US soldiers, reported missing last week, were found. The men went missing from a checkpoint 25 miles north of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the first troops to return to Scotland said their relief to be home was tinged with concern for their colleagues still in Iraq.
Thirty bandsmen, from the Lowland Band of the Scottish Division, arrived back at their Edinburgh base yesterday after four months as medics in Iraq.
Sergeant Carl Robertson, the drum major, said: "The dead soldiers were taken to our hospital in Iraq, and we treated the injured paratroopers, so we are all very aware that there are some very hostile Iraqis out there."
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