BRITISH troops are facing a showdown with the governor of Basra after he threatened to end co-operation with the Army and called for mass demonstrations unless the British command freed a group of senior policemen it arrested on charges of plotting deadly attacks.

The dispute with the Iraqi official came against a backdrop of increasing roadside bombings, assassinations and kidnappings in the Shiite port city, where thousands of British troops are based. In the city market yesterday, witnesses said that they had seen a man step out of a police vehicle to plant a bomb that killed one woman and wounded three other people.

Mohammed al-Waeli, the city governor, demanded the immediate release of five police officers who were among 14 people arrested on Tuesday in a series of British-led raids in the city. “Basra’s provincial council and all government offices will suspend all kinds of dealings with the [British] forces at all levels if they don’t release the detainees,” the governor said, adding that the British should hand control of the region’s security to local forces.

In an open letter to the citizens of Basra, General John Cooper, the commander of the British-led multinational force in the south, described those arrested as “the most dangerous and corrupt people in Basra”. He said that both sides must work together to secure Iraq’s second-largest city, whose police have been largely infiltrated by militias and have even been used as death squads by Islamist parties. These parties, many of which are believed to have strong ties to neighbouring Iran, exert broad control over all areas of city life, enforcing strict Muslim codes of dress and behaviour with beatings and shootings.

Mr al-Waeli said that the recent arrests hade been random and demanded that the central Government intervene to support him. The national Government, headed by Shiite religious parties, is also facing criticism for alleged cases of torture in police cells. Its security forces are often accused of operating death squads against mainly Sunni communities.

General Cooper said in his letter: “Some people wish to drive a wedge between the Basra people and the MNF [Multi-National Forces], but this must not be allowed to happen.”

He said that the operation, which involved Iraqi forces, was part of an Interior Ministry directive to weed out terrorists and militiamen who have infiltrated Basra’s British-trained police force. Those arrested, who included a police major, came from the Department of Internal Affairs — which is accused by many Basrans of running torture cells — the Criminal Intelligence Unit and the Serious Crimes Unit.

The raids were based on specific intelligence, the British general said, and troops also found 25 rifles and other weapons in the suspects’ houses, well over the limit of one gun permitted per Iraqi household for self-defence.

General Cooper said that his men were acting at the behest of the Interior Ministry, which he said had “instructed the chief of police to remove the most dangerous and most rotten elements from the police service”. He added: “They can no longer intimidate and attack those officers who wish to uphold the Iraqi law and protect the Iraqi people. Now a long-term strategy of reform can truly begin.”

The governor’s call for demonstrations outside the British consulate in Basra raised the spectre of riots last September, in which supporters of militias attacked British armoured vehicles as troops tried to free two British agents arrested by police while collecting intelligence about corruption.

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