IN A dirt alley strewn with trash and puddles of black sewage an Iraqi teenager smiled at me, slicing his throat with his fingers, as a gang of more than 30 sulky adolescents chanted “Down with Britain” and “Long live the Mehdi Army”.

“F*** off,” a second teenager shouted at one of the 12 British officers in our foot patrol. Others yelled taunts of “RPG, RPG” — rocket-propelled grenade. As we walked on, the teenagers began crowding round the soldiers, who kept their assault rifles pointed at the rooftops in case of snipers.

After 15 minutes, with the mood growing steadily uglier, the patrol piled back into its vehicles, which was when the stone throwing began. Rocks bounced off the sides of the armoured jeeps. A hard mud clod smashed into my vehicle’s sweltering confines as the patrol returned to base for a respite.

That was just a minor incident in one of Basra’s deadliest weekends since the US-led invasion of Iraq three years ago.

Increasingly, a city that was once the success story of post-Saddam Iraq resembles war-torn Baghdad. On Saturday a suicide car bomb tore apart a packed street market, killing 28 people. The attack, one of the worst yet in Iraq’s second city, was seen by many as a pointed message from Basra’s Shia groups to Nuri Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, who last week declared a state of emergency.

Early yesterday the Shia-dominated police force opened fire on a Sunni mosque in the city. Up to 12 people were killed as the security forces and Sunnis disputed whether those in the mosque were armed or innocent civilians.

My foot patrol enjoyed only a brief respite before being called back into Basra’s scalding 50C (122F) heat, amid rumours that Shia mobs were planning to attack Sunni mosques.

It is a far cry from the halcyon days after the invasion, when British forces could patrol without helmets or any ostentatious display of weapons. Now Basra is threatened by gang wars among its Shia factions and attacks on the city’s dwindling Sunni community. Saturday’s suicide bomb “was probably one of the groups here struggling for power, struggling for the ascendancy over control of Basra province. It was probably trying to send a message to the Prime Minister to basically keep your nose out,” said Major Rob Yuill, who trains Basra’s police.

“It’s . . . drifting toward a situation like Bosnia,” he went on, comparing the targeting of Basra’s Sunni minority to the fierce ethnic conflict of the Balkans in the early 1990s. “We’re stuck in the middle. We’re trying to assist the Iraqi police and Army, but we get caught up in it,” said Sergeant Lans Downe, 25, commenting on life on the frontline of Basra’s social meltdown. Nine British soldier were killed in 50 attacks in May.

Every time the men of Sergeant Downe’s Delta company go out in their Warrior armoured personnel carriers, they are tailed by cars or watch men on cell phones marking their movements and passing the information to someone farther down the road.

“You are constantly being watched. They put a name on where you are and what you are doing,” said Sergeant Downe, from Bristol. “Every time you are out (the danger) is a constant. One moment civilians will ask you for water. The next they bomb you . . . It’s worse than it was in Northern Ireland.”

Whenever they cross over or under a bridge the troops brace themselves for an attack. The bombs are often undetectable, camouflaged in fibre glass, breeze blocks or paper maché rocks. “The more we take off the street, the more they make,”said Sergeant Downe.

Their platoon tries to avoid going out on Saturdays, because that is when the worst attacks happen. But rocks and breeze blocks are hurled at their vehicles almost daily. When they are sent to secure the scene of a bombing, the mobs, made up of teenagers, escalate to Molotov cocktails and homemade grenades.

There are only about 700 British troops actively patrolling the city of 1.5 million. To protect Basra they are banking on a police force that, according to Major Yuill, has only “a small minority” of good cops.

The men in Delta company admit that they do not have the eyes and ears to rein in the death squads and gangs that have caused Basra’s murder rate to skyrocket. “A lot of it happens behind the scenes. There are a lot of side streets. It happens in the shadows, in the places we don’t know about,” Sergeant Downe said.

“Basra is a large area. We’re a small force,” said Lance Corporal Gavin Wooten, 25, from Sheffield and another member of Delta company.

As the city gets rougher, fewer Iraqis want to work with the British troops. Delta company has gone from having six or seven translators to just two.

“All the Islamic parties are killing the translators,” said one of the few who remain with the British, who goes by the name Jack. He lives on a British base and lists the names of at least four of his friends who have been killed.

• In all at least 44 people were killed across Iraq yesterday as Mr Maliki failed to gain acceptance for his candidates to head the key security ministries.

  In addition to those killed at the mosque in Basra, gunmen near the village of Ayn Layla, northeast of Baghdad, stopped vehicles along the road and shot their occupants, killing 20 people including seven minibus drivers and seven students, police said. Twelve others were killed in a series of incidents elsewhere. (AFP)

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