A British soldier has died in a "tragic firearms incident" in Iraq, the British Ministry of Defence said Thursday. He was based at Shaibah, near Basra, when the incident happened on Tuesday.
A British spokesman said the circumstances of the death are being investigated, but the soldier did not die as a result of enemy action.
Earlier it was reported that a U.S. military vehicle was hit with an explosion in the northern Iraq city of Mosul on Thursday, leaving at least four American soldiers "badly wounded", according to witnesses.
About ten witnesses reported seeing the "bodies of four U.S. soldiers", AFP reported, but there was no confirmation of their condition after the blast on a main road in front of the telecommunications center.
For its part, the U.S. military said it had no report of the blast, which witnesses said occurred at 9:30 am (local time).
Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed and two others were injured in a military vehicle accident in Balad, north of the capital city of Baghdad, the U.S. army said Thursday. The soldiers involved in Wednesday's crash were from the 220th Military Police Brigade, according to an army press release.
In another development, the U.N. staff of international aid workers in Iraq was reduced to 86 people Thursday and it will further cut in the next few days, a U.N. spokesman said.
"The secretary-general, on the advice of his security coordinator, has ordered a temporary redeployment of U.N. international staff in Iraq," said the chief U.N. spokesman, Fred Eckhard.
"This is not an evacuation, just a further downsizing and the security situation in the country remains under constant review," he conveyed.
The international staff was redployed to Amman, Jordan, he added. (Albawaba.com)
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