Is this how you would want to die? Is this what "liberation" looks like?

Mob cheers as British soldier dies

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Video: Ambushed vehicles A cheering mob made victory hand signals yesterday after a British serviceman was killed in an ambush on the streets of Basra. Men throw stones at a burning fuel truck in Basra The Ministry of Defence said the soldier was removed from Al Tuwaysa, central Basra, but died of his wounds later in hospital. A civilian driver in the convoy was killed at the scene of the ambush. The mob danced as his body was dragged from a burning fuel lorry. Pictures from the scene showed militants holding AK47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers as thick smoke from burning vehicles filled the air around them. The attackers were said to be members of the Mahdi army, the militia of Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which is fighting to wrest control of Basra from the British-backed local government. In other clashes, witnesses said they had heard gunfire and grenade blasts only a few hundred yards from the governor's office in the centre of the city. The fighting comes as British troops are scaling down forces in Basra to hand over increased responsibility to police and army units. One leading private security firm has warned its clients that the Mahdi army uprising indicates that the movement has concluded that the central government will not survive in the long-term. The report concludes that the Mahdi army and other Shia factions in the government are positioning for the break-up of the country. In Baghdad, a senior American official said the military had prepared plans to assault the capital's Sadr City slum. The Washington Post reported that US military officials view the area, a teeming enclave of two million people, as a "spider web". US units only patrol its outer edges. Original article posted here.