AN SAS soldier killed in Iraq last week was shot in the head as he led an operation to capture a senior Al-Qaeda leader.

Sergeant Eddie Collins was part of an unusually large SAS “hard arrest” team, which raided a terrorist safe house in Baghdad in the early hours of Wednesday.

The death of Collins, described by his commanding officer as a man who “always played to win”, comes as the SAS doubles the size of its force in Iraq to fight Iranian-driven attempts to make it appear that Britain is being chased out of the country.

The hope in last week’s raid was that the size of the SAS attack, believed to include more than 30 men backed up by other forces, would be sufficient to overwhelm the defences.

Although intelligence had accurately located the terrorist leader, it severely underestimated the number of insurgents in the house and the scale of their likely resistance.

“He was a senior Al-Qaeda terrorist,” one source said. “He was one of the ones who took over from Zarqawi [the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed by American special forces last year].

“It’s very difficult to be sure how many are going to be there in these circumstances,” the source said. “In this case there were just more of them than expected and there was a big firefight.

“You go in with people at the front and at the rear and the ones who are at the front are the first to get it. [Collins] was at the front and he was shot in the head.”

Although a medical team was close by, Collins, who was originally a member of the Parachute Regiment, was killed instantly and there was nothing it could do, the sources said.

His commanding officer described Collins as “a champion soldier, a proud and loving family man and a great friend.

“He always played to win and always set the finest example,” he said. “He died a warrior, on the battlefield.”

The raid was supported by paratroopers from the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG) and an Awacs aircraft was overhead sending back live video of the incident to the headquarters of the joint UK/US special operations task force.

The Ministry of Defence would only say Collins was carrying out “routine operations in support of coalition activity”.

Collins was the seventh member of the special forces to be killed in Iraq and his death brings the total UK toll to 169.

The SAS has stepped up its presence in Iraq with the dispatch of a second squadron of 60 men, meaning half its total strength is in the country.

The new squadron was sent to prevent Iran orchestrating attacks to make it look as though the British were being chased from the country during moves such as the recent pull-out from the Basra palace base in southern Iraq and the reduction in overall troop numbers.

Commanders fear Tehran could provide militias with sophisticated weapons that would allow a “spectacular” attack against the British at Basra airport, who currently number 5,500.

The Ministry of Defence announced yesterday that as part of the cuts 250 men of the King’s Royal Hussars would be returning from Iraq early over the next few weeks. The Basra garrison is to be cut to 5,000 over the next few months.

Senior officers believe Iran’s Revolutionary Guards might seek to stage a coup similar to the shooting down of a Lynx helicopter in May last year that killed all five on board.

One source said: “All the SAS efforts in the south are focused on stopping stuff coming in from Iran.”

The new SAS force is in addition to the squadron already based in Baghdad working with the Americans and a detachment in Basra.

The SAS has mounted numerous successful missions in Iraq in cooperation with Delta, its US equivalent.

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