British forces have stormed the headquarters of a rogue Iraqi police unit where it was feared that police officers planned to kill up to 178 detainees, a military spokesman has said.
 
Major Charlie Burbridge, said: "We've deployed a significant number of soldiers in Basra in the  early hours of this morning with a view to disbanding the serious crimes unit and the police station from which the unit operates.

"The serious crimes unit is in the process of being disbanded  and the jamiaat building in which they operate is in the process of  being removed from service. The operation is ongoing."

Burbridge said that there had been no resistance to the raid so far, but that he expected there to be some because it is "a big operation and therefore it's not going to be a popular one with the people who want to see us fail".

"There are 178 prisoners inside the police station and one of the reasons we decided to go today was that we began to receive some very accurate intelligence which suggests that the serious crime unit was about to start killing the prisoners," he said.

Torture
  
Captain Tane Dunlop, a British military spokesman, said the troops carried out medical assessments of detainees at the building and transferred them to another police station.

"We [then] used explosives to put the building beyond use so it can no longer be used by the criminal enterprise," he said.

Burbridge said a lot of the detainees had been found to have injuries, "but we don't know if it was torture at this stage".

Photo Caption

Destroyed Iraqi police base in Basra