TWO London accents marked out the newest and rawest recruits to Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr’s besieged Iraqi militia amid drifting black smoke and the rattle of helicopter gunships above Najaf.

With no training or military experience and just hours after arriving in Najaf, two Iraqi-born Britons yesterday found themselves on the front line after abandoning jobs and studies in Britain to fight alongside al-Mahdi Army against US Marines ringing the holy Shia city.

Their timing could not be worse. US Humvees equipped with loudspeakers yesterday fuelled speculation that a big push by Marines is imminent after five days of heavy fighting, centred on the vast cemetery that adjoins the city.

Touring the streets, they ordered all residents to leave central districts and gave Hojatoleslam al-Sadr’s militia a “last chance” to surrender “or death will be your penalty”.

But sitting within the spectacular golden-domed shrine of Imam Ali that stands above the battle, the two Londoners, uncle and nephew with just two years between them, insisted they were ready to die alongside their fellow Muslims and for the country where they were born.

Speaking in distinctively London accents — with an incongruous mix of British slang and Islamic rhetoric — the pair admitted that they had no previous military training and acknowledged that, if captured, they risk being sent to Guantanamo Bay or a highsecurity US prison in Iraq.

The elder Briton said: “It is our country and there are invaders here. We have taken the side of Moqtada al-Sadr because we believe it is the right side.”

A tall, bearded 23-year-old, he refused to give his name and identified himself only by the nom de guerre Abu Hakid (Father of Fury), saying he did not want the British Government “to annoy us and our family for no reason”.

Dressed in a long white traditional tunic, he conversed in fluent Arabic with curious Iraqi fighters clustered around the newcomers inside the tiny room. Asked why he came to fight, he said simply: “It is evil against the angels.”

His nephew, nodding agreement, chimed in: “Bush said you are either with us or against us. We had to decide whether to be with him or against him, so we are against him, obviously.”

At just 21 years old he has selected the pseudonym Abu Turab (Father of Dust), with all the Koranic and biblical resonance of death that word carries. They refused to say exactly where they lived or worked. Abu Turab said only that he was training to be an IT tutor and Abu Hakid revealed that his brothers had fought in the Iran-Iraq war against Saddam Hussein, and that he had worked in supermarkets in London.

They insisted they were not the only foreign fighters in Najaf and expected some of their friends to follow their lead, but refused to say how they travelled from Britain.

“I’m not going to tell you exactly how, but obviously we flew to another country and we took a not-legit way to get in,” smiled Abu Hakid, who was born in Najaf but moved to Britain as a child.

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