BRITISH troops in southern Iraq yesterday arrested insurgents suspected of involvement in a roadside bombing campaign that has killed two British soldiers in six weeks.

A pre-dawn raiding party descended on homes in the lawless town of al-Majar al- Kabir, making arrests and seizing suspected bomb- making equipment.

Iraqi politicians in the town, where six Royal Military Police were shot dead during a riot in June 2003, complained that the raid violated agreements.

Codenamed Operation Trojan, the raid was ordered by Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Williams, the commander of Task Force Maysan, which patrols the troublesome Marsh Arab region 250 miles south of Baghdad. The area has long been notorious for crime, tribal rivalries and smuggling across the nearby border with Iran.

It follows the deaths from roadside bombs last month of Guardsman Anthony Wakefield, of the Coldstream Guards, and Lance Corporal Alan Brackenbury, of the King’s Royal Hussars.

Lance Corporal Brackenbury’s unit narrowly missed another bomb the next day, and the Iraqi Army later found a third sophisticated device, manufactured from three claymore-style mines, covered in expanded foam and rolled in sand for disguise.

Those detained yesterday lived in the Shia-majority province, military sources said, and did not appear to be insurgents of the al-Zarqawi group. “The operation was the product of some fairly careful consideration of information received after the two deaths,” a spokesman for the multinational forces in Iraq said.

Major Steve Melbourne, a Royal Marine who accompanied the raid, said that it began at 3am, when the Staffordshire Regiment’s noisy armoured Warriors stopped on bridges and approach roads short of the town, while its quieter armoured Land Rovers went on, with soldiers inside them using night-vision goggles. “They used ladders to get over the walls and up onto roofs, where many people sleep at this time of the year, ” he said. “It was a ‘soft knock’ operation, no doors were broken down.”

The suspects’ families “protested their innocence” but did not put up a fight, he said. The suspects were blindfolded, handcuffed and led away. Bomb-making equipment was found. Soldiers handed out leaflets to local people explaining the raid, but Adil Mohadder, the province’s governor, was told only after the raid began.

British officers are wary of Iraqis accompanying them, having noticed that in recent joint patrols local police have unacccountably begun flashing lights and sounding horns as they near the target.

There is concern that the raid could provoke further attacks on British forces.

After a similar operation in May, Mr Mohadder and his officials temporarily broke off relations with the British.

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