Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News

BAGHDAD, 2 May 2004 — Publication of photos depicting British troops brutally abusing an Iraqi prisoner ignited a new furor yesterday.

The photographs were published in Britain’s mass-circulation Daily Mirror showing troops abusing an Iraqi in a camp near Basra in British-controlled southern Iraq.

“Vile, but this time it’s a British soldier degrading an Iraqi,” said the Daily Mirror’s headline on a front page dominated by a photograph of a man in army uniform appearing to urinate on a bound captive who had a bag over his head.

Further pictures inside appeared to show a soldier jabbing the man — who was picked up for suspected theft — in the groin with a rifle, and the prisoner lying on the floor with a soldier’s boot on his head.

The Daily Mirror — the strongest voice of opposition to the Iraq war among the British press — said that the prisoner, aged 18-20, was savagely beaten before being thrown from a moving truck. His fate is not known.

The tabloid said it was given the pictures by serving soldiers from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, one of whom was among the attackers.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned such mistreatment, if proved, as “completely and utterly unacceptable”, while the Defense Ministry launched an urgent probe.

“If there has been any abuse, I believe it to be exceptional, but that doesn’t make it any the less unacceptable,” Blair said in Dublin, where he was among European leaders attending EU enlargement celebrations.

“Let me make it quite clear, if these things have actually been done, they are completely and utterly unacceptable,” Blair told reporters.

“We went to Iraq to get rid of that type of thing, not to do it.”

Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, the British Army’s chief of general staff said that the allegations were under investigation.

The furor came after pictures broadcast throughout the Arab world apparently showing US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners drew condemnation from international leaders.

Meanwhile, soldiers of the old Iraqi Army led by one of Saddam Hussein’s generals patrolled Fallujah yesterday, a year after George W. Bush declared “mission accomplished” in ousting the Iraqi regime.

Cries of “victory over the Americans” echoed from minarets and gunmen celebrated in the streets under the Saddam-era Iraqi flags. Thousands who had fled a month of heavy fighting streamed back to their homes after US Marines pulled back from their siege positions.

Two US soldiers and two sailors were killed in separate attacks, the US military said yesterday.

One soldier was killed when a roadside bomb hit a military convoy in northern Iraq. A soldier who was wounded in a similar attack in the same area on Friday died of his injuries yesterday.

Two US Navy sailors were killed in Al-Anbar province, which includes Fallujah, on Friday, a Marine statement said.