UK solider ‘accidentally’ kills Iraqi boy
A British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, has accidentally killed a 14-year-old boy.
Ali Salim was playing near a school, now the army barracks of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards in a suburb of the city, when he was reportedly shot at close range.
It is thought the boy died after a single bullet punctured his abdomen.
A witness and friend of the boy said Ali had been talking and laughing with a soldier, who was guarding the barracks, when the soldier fired without provocation.
However, other accounts of the event tell a different story. Another eyewitness said Ali tried to grab the soldier’s rifle causing it to fire.
Royal Military Police were investigating the incident, an official source said.
Captain Crispian Cuss, a British Army spokesman in Basra, said the incident was ‘in no way malicious’. But he added: ‘It appears to have been a very unfortunate accident rather than anything else.’
