BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq denounced British forces on Tuesday over a dramatic rescue of two undercover soldiers that could stoke hostility to the army in increasingly volatile southern Iraq. [Editor: Reuter's exaggerates, an Iraqi spokesman deemed it 'unfortunate'.]
British troops used an armoured fighting vehicle on Monday to burst into an Iraqi jail in search of soldiers held by police in Basra. The British commander said he learnt they had been handed to militia and ordered their rescue from a nearby house.
"It is a very unfortunate development that the British forces should try to release their forces the way it happened," Haider al-Ebadi, an adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, told a news conference in Baghdad.
British forces said the soldiers were in danger.
"From an early stage I had good reason to believe the lives of the two soldiers were at risk," Brigadier John Lorimer, the British commander in Basra, said in a statement.
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