British Royal Marines operating near Baghdad. A battle group of British soldiers will start patrolling a restive region south of Baghdad after a mortar exploded in their new camp overnight, without causing any casualties, a spokesman said.(AFP/Maurice McDonald)
British troops set up camp in new hostile region of Iraq
BAGHDAD (AFP) - A battle group of British soldiers settled into a restive region south of Baghdad after a mortar exploded in their new camp overnight, with their first patrols expected in the coming days, a spokesman said.
The Black Watch regiment, however, suffered its first victims of the US requested mission to move in to Babil province from the relative calm of southern Iraq, with the death of a soldier in a vehicle accident on Friday that left three others wounded.
The last of some 850 Black Watch troops and support personnel arrived in Camp Dogwood on Friday afternoon, freeing up US soldiers, who had been based there, to tackle other insurgent hotspots.
"Today they did not go out on patrol as they spent their time setting up camp, sorting out force protection, laying out supplies, food rations, things like that," said British military spokesman Major Charles Mayo.
Earlier, he had said the troops would start conducting vehicle and foot patrols in the coming days to learn about their new environment, which is far more hostile than down south where Britain's 8,500-strong contingent is based.
Mayo, however, said later in the day that this would take place once they had organized themselves.
"It is part of the settling in process they have got to get to know the local area, get a feel for it," explained Mayo, talking by telephone from Iraq's second city of Basra, where the British army is headquartered.
Camp Dogwood -- a vast area with a perimeter of some 40 kilometres (26 miles) -- lies to the west of rebel town of Mahmudiyah which is part of a so-called "triangle of death" along with Latifiyah and Iskandariyah in Babil province.
In a rude awakening on their first full-night together in Babil, a mortar round crashed into the base without causing any casualties or damage, said Mayo, noting that the sheer size of the camp and the small area the British troops occupied in it meant they had not been in any real danger.
The touring British troops also struck a roadside bomb during their long journey from Basra the previous day, which again caused no serious harm, but slowed the progress of the convoy.
US soldiers helped to secure the route for the British tanks, Land Rovers and other army vehicles, which departed Basra on Wednesday.
They found and unarmed three other bombs left by the roadside, said Mayo.
The Black Watch will fill a gap left by US troops departing to fight insurgents around the restive Sunni bastion of Fallujah west of Baghdad.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Tony Blair promised that the regiment would be home by Christmas, but left open the possibility that other British troops may have to replace them.
The redeployment came amid uncertainties over the fate of a British-Iraqi aid worker, Margaret Hassan, who was kidnapped in Baghdad on October 19.
Hassan, 59, has twice pleaded with Britons to urge London not to redeploy its soldiers on videotape broadcast Arabic television.
