Black Watch Pays Price for Backing Fallujah Offensive
Tony Blair faced calls from Labour MPs last night to pull British troops out of Iraq's notorious "Triangle of Death" after another Black Watch soldier was killed and two more were injured.
The attack brought the death toll of British troops to four in the past five days since the Black Watch was moved into the area to allow US troops to launch an assault on rebel insurgents based in Fallujah.
The soldiers' Warrior fighting vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb while they were on patrol north of their base at Camp Dogwood at about 6.30pm yesterday. The force of the blast threw the armoured car on to its side and into a ditch.
The injured soldiers were taken by helicopter to a US military hospital in Baghdad. Families of all three soldiers were being contacted last night by the Ministry of Defence.
Soldiers shot up dozens of bright illumination flares into the night sky to shed light on the disaster scene and aid rescue efforts. A helicopter buzzed overhead in an effort to track down the insurgents who fled into the darkness.
The Black Watch spokesman Captain Stuart Macaulay, 31, said: "While we mourn a lost colleague, the whole battle group has just been made more determined by this to complete our important mission. Our thoughts are with his family."
The former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle accused Mr Blair of allowing Britain to be dragged into an unwinnable war. "It is a throwback to the misjudgements of the Vietnam war," he said.
The Foreign Office minister Bill Rammelldefended the decision to send UK troops into the more dangerous US zone and said "minimising the risk to our troops" was part of the "operational judgement" made by the MoD.
Only two days after their redeployment last week from Basra to the US sector near Baghdad three Black Watch soldiers died when a suicide bomber drove his car into a roadblock in a hostile area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Pte Paul Lowe, Pte Scott McArdle, 22, and Sgt Stuart Gray, 31, were killed along with their civilian Iraqi interpreter. Eight other soldiers were injured in the ambush.
On Sunday, two of the regiment's bomb disposal experts from the Royal Logistic Corps and the Royal Signals were seriously injured in a suicide car bomb attack in the area.
The Defence Secretary has ordered a more compassionate approach to the families of the soldiers who have been killed. However the bereaved heavily criticised GeoffHoon and Mr Blair for sending the Black Watch into the perilous area, when they should have been heading home to Britain at
the end of their tour of duty.
The 850-strong Black Watch group was controversially deployed to the base to relieve US forces preparing for the Fallujah assault. They have been tasked with cutting off the "rat runs" from the city to prevent insurgents escaping and supplies getting in.
In the lead-up to the redeployment, Lt-Col James Cowan, the commanding officer of the battalion, expressed concern over the decision to move his troops to Camp Dogwood, 25 miles south-west of Baghdad.
In a series of e-mails, Lt-Col Cowan reportedly wrote that the regiment expected "every lunatic terrorist from miles around to descend on us like bees to honey". He also expressed concern about the effect on the soldiers' families.
In one e-mail, Lt-Col Cowan wrote: "I hope the Government knows what it has got itself into. I'm not sure they fully appreciate the risks. The marines we have taken over from have taken nine dead and 197 injured since July. I hope we do better."
Colin Brown and Marie Woolf
09 November 2004
UK Guardian
The attack brought the death toll of British troops to four in the past five days since the Black Watch was moved into the area to allow US troops to launch an assault on rebel insurgents based in Fallujah.
The soldiers' Warrior fighting vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb while they were on patrol north of their base at Camp Dogwood at about 6.30pm yesterday. The force of the blast threw the armoured car on to its side and into a ditch.
The injured soldiers were taken by helicopter to a US military hospital in Baghdad. Families of all three soldiers were being contacted last night by the Ministry of Defence.
Soldiers shot up dozens of bright illumination flares into the night sky to shed light on the disaster scene and aid rescue efforts. A helicopter buzzed overhead in an effort to track down the insurgents who fled into the darkness.
The Black Watch spokesman Captain Stuart Macaulay, 31, said: "While we mourn a lost colleague, the whole battle group has just been made more determined by this to complete our important mission. Our thoughts are with his family."
The former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle accused Mr Blair of allowing Britain to be dragged into an unwinnable war. "It is a throwback to the misjudgements of the Vietnam war," he said.
The Foreign Office minister Bill Rammelldefended the decision to send UK troops into the more dangerous US zone and said "minimising the risk to our troops" was part of the "operational judgement" made by the MoD.
Only two days after their redeployment last week from Basra to the US sector near Baghdad three Black Watch soldiers died when a suicide bomber drove his car into a roadblock in a hostile area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Pte Paul Lowe, Pte Scott McArdle, 22, and Sgt Stuart Gray, 31, were killed along with their civilian Iraqi interpreter. Eight other soldiers were injured in the ambush.
On Sunday, two of the regiment's bomb disposal experts from the Royal Logistic Corps and the Royal Signals were seriously injured in a suicide car bomb attack in the area.
The Defence Secretary has ordered a more compassionate approach to the families of the soldiers who have been killed. However the bereaved heavily criticised GeoffHoon and Mr Blair for sending the Black Watch into the perilous area, when they should have been heading home to Britain at
the end of their tour of duty.
The 850-strong Black Watch group was controversially deployed to the base to relieve US forces preparing for the Fallujah assault. They have been tasked with cutting off the "rat runs" from the city to prevent insurgents escaping and supplies getting in.
In the lead-up to the redeployment, Lt-Col James Cowan, the commanding officer of the battalion, expressed concern over the decision to move his troops to Camp Dogwood, 25 miles south-west of Baghdad.
In a series of e-mails, Lt-Col Cowan reportedly wrote that the regiment expected "every lunatic terrorist from miles around to descend on us like bees to honey". He also expressed concern about the effect on the soldiers' families.
In one e-mail, Lt-Col Cowan wrote: "I hope the Government knows what it has got itself into. I'm not sure they fully appreciate the risks. The marines we have taken over from have taken nine dead and 197 injured since July. I hope we do better."
Colin Brown and Marie Woolf
09 November 2004
UK Guardian
posted by R7 | 11/09/2004 04:20:00 AM
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