British Royal Marines have made their biggest offensive of the Iraq war so far by seizing asuburb of the southern Iraq city of Basra.
Up to 1,000 Royal Marines and supporting troops, backed by heavy artillery and tanks, staged a commando assault in the Basra suburb of Abu al Khasib, killing some 30 Iraqifighters and destroying a bunker and several tanks.
The force suffered at least 14 casualties, defence sources said.
Earlier, one British soldier died after a launch carrying Royal Marines came under grenade attack and gunfire during a patrol of waterways on the Faw peninsula.
British troops have still not tried to capture Basra, a city with a population of 1.5 million, where more than a week of fighting has disrupted food and electricity supplies and forced many civilians to flee the city.
Three US troops were killed and a fourth injured when a Marine helicopter crashed yesterday in southern Iraq.
The US military said 15 troops were injured when a truck driven by a man wearing civilian clothes drove into a group of soldiers just outside a US military base in Kuwait. The incident followed a suicide attack inside Iraq on Saturday in which four US soldiers died.
The United States has lost at least 39 dead and 104 injured, with 17 listed as missing since the war began. Britain has lost 24 dead.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, in a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said 420 Iraqi civilians had died and at least 4,000 were wounded since the start of the war.
Agencies